/lit/ - Literature

>>13121347
Sidney Morgenbesser was pretty funny. Humorless autists like Plato deserve to get BIPEDED.

>>13121347
humor is vital.
why do you think the only two genres of greek theater were tragedies and comedies

>>13121347
>>Laughter is a devilish wind which deforms the lineaments of the face and makes men look like monkeys
Is that from The Name of the Rose? I remember the old, blind, library guy say this.

>>13121385
Yes it was during a discussion about whether Jesus every laughed.

>>13121347
my stance on humour and laughter is that i like jokes, and i like to laugh.

Reminder that one of the key symptoms of autism is being unable to "understand" humour (as much as a natural human emotional response can be "understood") and taking jokes too literally

>>13121511
There's a difference between not understanding jokes due to autism, and avoiding jokes because of their silly and useless nature.

>is wit important?
yes, wit is important.

>>13121637
Humor is the lowest form of wit.

>>13121511
>being unable to "understand" humour
You have 5 seconds to explain what humor is.

>>13121644
well, be that as it may, one must accustom themselves to the baser aspects of man to come to any true conclusions about him; in our adventures we will return perhaps to the source from which these scions derive. foundation, though it be mere monkeys, will lead to furtherance.

post /lit/ jokes

>>13121347
there's always some self-irony when the wise man laughs, so it's ok.

I've actually been sitting on a theory about jokes for a while that I'd like to share

Most (not all, but a great many) jokes fall into a specific class I've identified that consists of two steps, usually divided between the set-up and punchline
1. Set up or refer to some kind of abstract landscape
2. Reveal something previously unseen about that landscape that makes it seem like it existed in the first place for the very sake of the joke
This is achieved through the use of what I call "hooks," which are the various traits of the landscape that the punchline refers to and finds some unexpected pattern within. Every joke has a finite, countable number of hooks that aren't too hard to identify. Every joke has two hooks at a minimum. The more hooks a joke has, the more "perfect" and arguably funnier it will feel, but the harder it often is to write.
I'm being very vague, so let's take an example. It's an example I actually find painfully unfunny, but illustrates the point well:
>Q: What do you call the guards outside the Samsung store? A: The Guardians of the Galaxy
How many "hooks" are in this punchline, and what are they? I'd say there are three. First, those who guard a store are literally guardians. Second, Samsung sells a phone called the Galaxy, which you would find in one of their stores. Third, there exists a popular blockbuster movie called The Guardians of the Galaxy. By referring to and combining all of those disparate facts that typically wouldn't be considered in relation to each other, a feeling is instilled in the audience that there was some reason for all of those seemingly unrelated facts to be true. If a particular one of these kinds of jokes really tickles you or catches you off guard, it might draw out thoughts like "of course!" or "it's just too perfect!"
You'll notice that the reference to the movie wasn't even set up in the joke, and instead acted as the structure to hang the other two hooks on. This isn't rare, it's quite often that a joke will rely on hooks in the general landscape we already find ourselves in together. The most common ulterior landscape to reference is language itself; most puns work by finding hooks in their native language and pulling them together, making it seem as if the language existed in the first place for the sake of such a perfect joke.

Anyways, what do you think? Can you name or write any other jokes with three hooks? What about four or five? Do you think this is a useful way to analyze humor?

>>13121776
>I might have an open casket funeral. Remains to be seen.
Single hook? A singular play on the word remain (verb/bones).

I don't think the number of hooks is a good predictor of humour, because the "of course!"-ness of the joke might be greater if the hooks are more subtle.

However standup, which is the highest form of verbal humour rarely comprises jokes with puns or play on words of even hooks in general. The best comedy is observational, like Carlin's.

>>13121776
i think reference contained in the joke is key for that type of joke itself. consider the narrative digressions in family guy, jovial things that are either canonical or not, and after their course we return to the main plot of that episode. i would say that there are many forms of jokes and you have analyzed a type, but not the entirety of the genre. some jokes have so many corresponding parts that it takes an entire book to convey.

>>13121776
By the way, here's the most complex joke I know with a whopping six hooks:

>Q: What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito? A: No one knows, you can't cross a vector with a scalar

Hook 1: Mountain climbers scale mountains, and one who scales could be called a "scaler"
Hook 2: Mosquitoes are capable of transmitting diseases between animals, and would likewise be considered a "vector" by biologists
Hook 3: Unlike in biology, in linear algebra a "vector" is an element of a vector space which has a specific magnitude and direction
Hook 4: "scaler" sounds like "scalar," with scalars being the constituent values that make up a vector.
Hook 5: The "cross" in "when you cross" refers to combining the two, but in linear algebra it refers to the cross product, which is a binary operation on two vectors in 3D space that gives the vector perpendicular to both.
Hook 6: Scalars are not vectors and do not point in any direction, so finding the cross-product between a vector and a scalar makes no sense, since you'd be trying to find a vector perpendicular to an element that has no direction.

This joke is amazing to me and really does give one the feeling that biology, mathematics, and the English language were all deliberately constructed to allow such a perfect joke to exist

>>13121944
I mean I get it because of my engineering background, but its not something a normie would understand. Even so, I didn't find it particularly funny, but then again I don't find jokes with the focal point being references funny

>>13121944
I did not know what a vector was and I didn't laugh but I do wonder if I would have laughed had I not had the joke explained to me.

>>13121347
Laughter is part of the human soul, and something to be celebrated. I love jokes, and love laughing. I disagree that it's a mark of the unintelligent. The funniest people are usually some of the smartest.

>most philosophers that have written about laughter have talked negatively of it
You couldn’t name 2 instances of it, not including the Plato quote

>>13121989
I don't actually find it all that funny either, it's never made me laugh. I still find it a downright amazing joke anyways, just for the complexity of the punchline's mechanics. It's the kind of joke that had to have been written in a sudden flash of inspiration, because it's just too ungodly hard to hunt for that many hooks that can be neatly piled on top of each other

>>13121347
Laughter is the manifestation of jouissance by an act of the understanding during a particulary stimulating determination of pure knowledge, which is pure being.

>>13121347
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. -Wittgenstein

>>13122207
You have a small penis

>>13121347
Aristotle said in the Nicomachean Ethics that “Life includes rest as well as activity, and in this is included leisure and amusement.” Some people carry amusement to excess—“vulgar buffoons,” Aristotle calls them—but just as bad are “those who can neither make a joke themselves nor put up with those who do,” whom he calls “boorish and unpolished.” Between buffoonery and boorishness there is a happy medium—engaging in humor at the right time and place, and to the right degree. This virtue Aristotle calls eutrapelia, ready-wittedness.

Will be interesting to see what flavours of actual clinical autism will be revealed by this thread.

Aquinas suggests that humor has social benefits. Extending the meaning of Aristotle’s eutrapelia, he talks about “a eutrapelos, a pleasant person with a happy cast of mind who gives his words and deeds a cheerful turn.” The person who is never playful or humorous, Aquinas says, is acting “against reason” and so is guilty of a vice.

Anything conflicting with reason in human action is vicious. It is against reason for a man to be burdensome to others, by never showing himself agreeable to others or being a kill-joy or wet blanket on their enjoyment. And so Seneca says, “Bear yourself with wit, lest you be regarded as sour or despised as dull.” Now those who lack playfulness are sinful, those who never say anything to make you smile, or are grumpy with those who do

>>13122063
> not knowing what a vector is
the absolute state of /lit/

>>13121347
paris laughing while jaunting back into the hurly burly after being spirited away after the duel with menelaus is pretty irksome

Humor is essential, it's the highest and most effective form of critique

>>13121347
Thomas Hobbes says "that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly"

Charles Baudelaire offers an interesting variation on Hobbes' superiority theory, mixing it with mortal inferiority. He argues that that "laughter is satanic"—an expression of dominance over animals and a frustrated complaint against our being merely mortal.

Schopenhauer devotes a few pages of wwr to a fairly unique and incisive theory of humour but I'm too comfy where I am to get up and go to where the book is and find the relevant section. Just throwing it out there.

>>13121347
>Generally I notice correlation between plebs/brainlets and the frequency of LMAOs in a conversation
It's parabolic and depends on the company. Stupid people will laugh at almost anything, intelligent people can find reasons to laugh at almost anything. The intelligent person who laughs in the company of stupid people, at the same thing, will not be laughing for the same reason, and vice-a-versa.

>>13121430
that's it

autists and lonely jerks btfo

>>13122364
Great post
I'd rather laugh a lot than little, I don't care which side of the parabola I'm on

Stop laughing.

>“During one particularly harrowing moment, Hannah was describing a moment of violence that was all too familiar to women, particularly those in the LGBTIQ community,” McCann wrote. “The room was silent. Then, a lone male voice from the back of the room shouted ‘Where’s the bloody jokes?'”

>According to McCann, the audience, which included a large contingent of women from a Canberra queer women’s group, immediately shouted down the heckler.

>“Everyone is yelling,” she recalled. “One amazing woman who looked like she could snap me like a twig jumps up from her seat in front of us and was looking back into the crowd as if she was personally going to go find the guy. All the frustration and repressed anger of the night unleashed at once.”

>“Through all this Hannah is standing on the stage, mic in hand, waiting out the crowd’s anger,” McCann continued. “Here’s this woman who is telling the most viscerally sad and confronting story I’d ever heard on stage and this one guy thought he was entitled enough to interject. I’d be furious.”

>“She wasn’t. When she eventually speaks it’s to direct the ushers to remove him. ‘I don’t want you here,’ she says, calmly. ‘I’ll donate the money from your ticket to a charity that helps victims of domestic violence. Get out, mate.’ Then she went straight back into her set.”

>>13121384
>what's a satyr play?

>>13122682
Was he against humor, laughing or something like that?

>>13122701
This literally reads like a satire of feminists

>>13122722
>literally
thank god you added that

>>13122722
>17-year-olds are never in their prime!
>I AM IN MY PRIME!
>I am in my prime!

>>13121347

Laughter is a coping mechanism for the fucking horrendous existence we are stuck in. It's actually theorised that men are typically funnier than women because men would use humour to overcome fear in the face of danger and such. It's why in the military and the police they develop quite a sick sense of humour in the face of witnessing depressing things.

Besides, comedians and people who are able to make those who aren't part of the underclass laugh takes intelligence. You must be able to perceive the world and put into humorous words the absurdity of a situation or a thing.

Laughter is one of the few good things about being alive and I see no reason to take it away from people.

>>13122737
replace it with 'seriously' or 'honestly' to soothe your autism

>>13122708
>The triumph over beauty is celebrated by humour – the Schadenfreude that every successful deprivation calls forth. There is laughter because there is nothing to laugh at. Laughter, whether conciliatory or terrible, always occurs when some fear passes. It indicates liberation either from physical danger or from the grip of logic. Conciliatory laughter is heard as the echo of an escape from power; the wrong kind overcomes fear by capitulating to the forces which are to be feared. It is the echo of power as something inescapable. Fun is a medicinal bath. The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it. It makes laughter the instrument of the fraud practised on happiness. Moments of happiness are without laughter; only operettas and films portray sex to the accompaniment of resounding laughter. But Baudelaire is as devoid of humour as Hölderlin. In the false society laughter is a disease which has attacked happiness and is drawing it into its worthless totality. To laugh at something is always to deride it, and the life which, according to Bergson, in laughter breaks through the barrier, is actually an invading barbaric life, self-assertion prepared to parade its liberation from any scruple when the social occasion arises. Such a laughing audience is a parody of humanity. Its members are monads, all dedicated to the pleasure of being ready for anything at the expense of everyone else. Their harmony is a caricature of solidarity. What is fiendish about this false laughter is that it is a compelling parody of the best, which is conciliatory. Delight is austere: res severa verum gaudium. The monastic theory that not asceticism but the sexual act denotes the renunciation of attainable bliss receives negative confirmation in the gravity of the lover who with foreboding commits his life to the fleeting moment. In the culture industry, jovial denial takes the place of the pain found in ecstasy and in asceticism. The supreme law is that they shall not satisfy their desires at any price; they must laugh and be content with laughter. In every product of the culture industry, the permanent denial imposed by civilisation is once again unmistakably demonstrated and inflicted on its victims. To offer and to deprive them of something is one and the same.

>>13122701
Anti-humour can actually be funny though
https://youtu.be/qPj8pjAXYdQ

>>13121776
Good theory, but how do you explain parodies being funny? Like that SNL clip where Ryan Gosling talks about Papyrus font, or “Kyle” on Youtube, or Sam Hyde on TEDx? Why is it so funny when people get trolled, like Pool’s Closed or imPractical Jokers?

There must be more to it. I find it fascinating. I don’t do drugs anymore but years ago whenever I smoked I’d spend hours on the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on philosophy of humor. It’s so important yet can’t be explained.

>>13122744
those work too
the important thing is to have an adjective there to point out that you're not being facetious because one would definitely have thought so otherwise

>>13122757
It's not meant to indicate sincerity, it's a modifier meant to emphasize that the thing actually resembles a satire, not just something that I think is dumb and so am comparing to satire.

>>13122740
faced with such atrocities, you either laugh or cry. I choose to laugh

>>13121618
>There's a difference between not understanding jokes due to autism, and avoiding jokes because of their silly and useless nature.
.t autist

I would hang myself if not for humor.

>>13121347
It's just you expressing amusement.
>It's primitive WAAAH
Ah I see. Go rape some little boys, Plato, since you're so fucking civilized.

Humour is if you laugh anyway

>>13121618
>if its not immediately productive then its bad
kys

>>13121347
>>13121347
Democritus laughed at everything all the time lmao. What about when Chrysippus died of laughter and when Wittgenstein said that >>13122226 lol? Laughing at everything is the true philosopher's outlook.

>>13121372
>BIPEDED

>>13121347
laughter is excessive; humor is alright as long as it excites no more than a slight grin.

>>13121944
Its shit
t. Physics student

>>13122804
sheeeit, i’ll be grinning cheek to cheek my way into the noose! what sweeter release than that taken to such extremes!

>>13121618
Humor is much more important in day-to-day life than philosophy.

>>13121657
Funnily enough, that's a very autistic thing to ask. Humor as a concept defies strict definition, and must be intuitively felt and understood. Similarly to how you understand that you're a conscious being. You can't explain the precise workings of it, but you can understand its existence.

Sometimes in lecture-like situations the speaker will tell a joke and although I understand it I do not find it funny and I’m the only one in the room who does not laugh and grin. Are they laughing out of politeness for or solidarity with the speaker? With others? Is this impolite of me?

>>13121944
I, too watch Numberphile

>>13121384
I couldn't agree more.
It's almost impossible to speak at length about serious subjects without including some humor as a pain pill. This has probably been refuted somewhere, though.

>>13124598
I learned that one from my sixth grade math teacher, none of us knew why it was funny at the time but I never forgot how it went

>>13124669
I don't believe you, because I find it a little unusual to remember a fairly complex joke exactly from that long ago (unless you're underage), and also because your teacher would have to be really autistic to think 6th graders would get anything from a joke based in Biology and Calc III

>>13121347

I'm the most serious person I have ever known and let me tell you it's largely a painful existence
Yes autism is definitely part of it but I think even outside of that I just have a deeply serious personality
It's not that I have no sense of humor in fact I feel quite capable of finding things funny but I simply cannot act at all in a jovial way or anything even close to it and I think this is a very major reason why I have a strained social life
Above all else I think most people appreciate funny people or as it's commonly put those who "know how to have a good time" and that's not me
And I think this is a big reason why philosophy is not the type of subject to reach people en masse in a direct manner these days
I think philosophical ideas disseminate especially now in a far more indirect manner because the attachment to funny and lighthearted things has ballooned and at the same time the general concept of what is actually serious has also deteriorated

>>13121944
>>>/r/iamverysmart
And yes. Please go to reddit.

>the virgin 'humor is chidlish and permanent seriousness is ideal'
>the chad 'just laugh bro'

>>13121944
This is actually incredibly good counterexample of >>13121776 this anon's hypothesis.

>>13121347
Go to hell.
Laughter is beautiful.

>>13122707
that when they take the (Bleep!) and stick it in the (Bleep!) while (Bleep!)-ing the (Bleep!)

>>13122739
>part your hair and lose the hornrims, i'm going to pretend like you're buddy holly.
>you said you weren't gay
>I'm not

>>13121657
That's precisely proving his point.
Humor belongs to the generic baguage of man and trying to explain it is as useless as explaining colors or sounds.

>>13121347

>>13124730
this
>i hate funny things because Hobbes, Baudelaire, and Ligotti found ways to make even laughter seem horrific
time to put the book down for a while

I think they make a good point, but is all laughter malevolent? I don't think that's always the case.

>>13121347
Laughter is the basis of human socialization and also one of the few things that we don't sahre with monkeys, so your Plato quote falls a bit flat I'm afraid.
Besides, if you look at humans long enough they will start looking like monkeys, laughter or not. We're just that close to them.

Next time you'll make a thread about why breathing is sullying your lung with foreign substances. "Le rire est le propre de l'homme" faggot.

That said, if you want actual philosophical discussion of laughter without necessarily being a turbo-autist, Adorno has some bits on the perversion of laughter by modern society, and there is of course the classic Bergson study of laughter.
>>13122244
Very nice image.

>>13121347
Plato was Socrates' bitch and Socrates only went to comedies, never to tragedies, that should tell you that Plato must have enjoyed humor in some form. The guy literally burned his Poetry to make Socrates accept him as his pupil, I can't imagine how deep he was in his ass, Plato must have felt amazing being his little cum dumpster.

Humor and laughter are the only things that bring me joy and make life worth living. I only wish it were less transient.

>>13121347
Laughter is recognition without responsibility. The catharsis of denying oneself accountability. A delirious lapse of sobriety. In it one finds traces of sacrificial revelry. One can not engage in either humor or laughter without denying oneself and therefore that of the other. Wit is a caustic substance that scathes all involved in it. It is the opposite of sincerity and conscious love.

>>13121347
>some vestigial trait that returns only when we regress to more primitive forms.

lmao how about you name to us a single non-human animal capable of laughter

>hard mode: no parrots

>>13122740
>men are typically funnier than women
Based on what measure? Sounds like another incel coping mechanism. Not all humor is a coping mechanism either, not all humor is derived from being in horrible situations, your entire post is fucking bullshit.

>>13121347
People say lol/lmao in text because they don't trust the reader to have the intelligence to understanding your intent in lighthearted. Normalfags tend to fear any kind of confrontation or negativity so if you play it off like it's a funny/silly situation they are less likely to sperg out.

>>13125262
reddit

>>13125262
>Laughter is the basis of human socialization and also one of the few things that we don't sahre with monkeys
We don't share speech with monkeys either and with speech people are capable of uttering the dumbest things.

>>13122707
precisely a tragedy, trago-oedia

>>13125983
nice haircute, dork

>>13122207
Absolute pseud

>>13122285
Based Schoppy poster.
Schopenhauer, Arthur, et al. The World as Will and Idea. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948, vol.3, pp.266.

The incongruity theory is the only theory of humor that accounts for all forms of positive and negative humor. Schoppy's version is more comprehensive than Kant who writes that a joke evaporates into nothing but obviously humor can be didactic.

Simon Critchley has a similar incongruity theory based off the phenomenology of a joke. A great book on humour, fun read and short.

Humor is a response to the expectations one forms about everything around them. However, it has to be interpreted as a benign violation of our expectations. If it were not, then we could interpret it as tragedy and be disappointed, hold contempt, etc. Laughter, which Freud pretty much exclusively discusses, is a mode of expression for humor and is a release valve for psychic energies because clearly we laugh without feeling humor (laughing to fit in) and we can have amusement without laughing.

>>13121347
laughter gets kind of elusive the less stupid you are

>>13121347
He who doesn't know humour can't be truly serious, for he cannot tell the place where he is to be serious from the place where he isn't.