Things I have learned about humor in CW 350H so far

1) Writing effective comedy is the act of writing jokes that will be well received by the audience you are performing in front of.

2) There is no such thing as a joke that is funny absolutely. Writing comedy is a matter of selecting material based on what most of your audience identifies with, what they choose to believe in, or what can surprises them in a humorous fashion without crossing the line between funny and upsetting.

3) The fact that the criterion for what is funny is different for each individual person is what makes no joke funny absolutely.

4) The trick to finding out what you should perform lies in making stereotypes and generalizations about what most individuals in your audience thinks is funny and writing jokes specifically for that crowd.

For example, I could write some jokes that make fun of the stereotypical conservative Republican that is borderline offensive. I would only read this to a group of people that have some degree of contempt for the stereotypical conservative Republican and enjoy the way it is offensive towards them. An ideal audience for this is a bunch of kids at the Grassroots festival, because, based on my stereotypes, I know that most of them are at the extreme end of the spectrum opposite to the stereotypical conservative Republican.

However, I wouldn't want to tell the same jokes to an NRA meeting if I wanted to make that crowd laugh. The only way that that would be funny is if the target audience was the liberal crowd. In other words, it would only be funny if the action of making awkward Republican jokes in front of Republicans was somehow communicated to the other audience that would think it's funny. Without them, the action of reading such jokes would never be funny, except to myself, which doesn't count as being funny anyways. This leads to my next point.

5) What the comedian believes is funny holds no bearing to what they should plan on writing. The greatest challenge of the comedian is to distinguish between the parts of their personality and sense of humor they need to bring out to a particular audience and which ones they need to conceal.

Or maybe this is just me that sees this as a challenge. My sense of humor has always been about two things; being creepy and saying offensive things that may be crossing the line for some individuals. However, ever since I started this engineering education, my mind has been slowly morphing. Simply due to the fact that I have been spending much of my time on understanding mathematical systems and solving technical problems, my perception of what is funny has been shifting towards what would be funny to those that spend much of their time understanding mathematical systems and solving technical problems.

From a 'writing humor' perspective, this would be great if the only people that I'm trying to entertain are engineers. But, obviously, this is not the case. In certain situations, such as the business world, I will want to bring out this kind of humor and suppress the creepy and offensive things. Reason being is because I have tried my creepy, offensive, and facetious type of humor around my classmates, and for 4 years now, they still maintain that everything I say is serious and literal. Either that or what I say goes above their head. It's pointless. But around most college students (such as the Humorous Writing class) creepy and offensive is the way to go, and I need to suppress the nerdy engineering humor.

It's exactly as Vaughn said at the beginning. There is always an audience that will think you're funny, whatever it is you're saying.

For the Humorous Writing class, I am in a unique position. Usually, people don't know that I'm joking when I try to be creepy. But because of the forum I am in, there is a presumption that, whatever it is I'm saying, I'm joking. Here is a list of things that the people in that class think is funny, or at least what my stereotypes of them say:

1) Taboo jokes
2) Weird and fucked up jokes - anything that is honestly shocking
3) Pop-culture references
4) References to other people in the class - inside jokes between classmates
5) Making fun of oneself - especially embarrassing stories and jokes
6) Witty name-calling - lots of swear words works well here

At least these are the glaringly obvious ones that I can think of right now. Personally, I don't think #3 and #4 are very funny. I believe they are very limiting in terms of creativity because the are mostly just picking on whatever thing the pop-culture reference or kid in the class is known for. Like Eric being a frat boy who had sex with Lerche, or Chris Brown hitting Rihanna. I've heard dozens of jokes on those two topics, and apparently it's funny. But I don't get it. It gets old pretty quickly. You can pick on a personality trait or an incident all you want, but it won't get a laugh out of me. It's an "Ohhh Snap!" moment, but that being said, I equate jokes like this to something you would see in a rap battle or failed SNL skits. (SNL sucks)

Now all of you know two things that will not make me laugh, so if I'm in an audience, you will know what to expect for certain jokes. Good for you!

I think I have my moments with #1 and #2, sometimes mixing them with #5. For the remainder of the semester, I'm going to be experimenting in these areas. Maybe I'll throw in a few #3's and #4's, who knows?

Now that was clutch!


Next time I might post something funny. Tough luck tonight though.