Tag: philosofun

Types of Jokes

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Non-sequitur

It does not follow. Non-sequiturs are one of the most common type of joke. They rely on setting up an expectation and going in another direction. That shock and relief from the misdirection makes the funny.

Blue

Blue or risqué jokes are vulgar, dark, or morbid, and are often associated with non-sequiturs as they are often used for a shock value. Sometimes comedians are described as “blue” but it’s more useful to describe their jokes as blue. Not every single joke from a comedian is blue, although some say the failure to work clean or even one vulgar word or statement taints the entire set (and the comedian is therefore labelled as blue).

Hyperbolic

Hyperbolic jokes or exaggerations are about extremes to ridiculous proportions. It sparks an imagination of an absurd scenario that is funny, creates a caricature of reality, or mocks in a way that highlights some odd feature. The exaggeration is a game that the audience is in on.

Ironic 

Ironic jokes rely on mocking and the audience knowing it. There can be an underlying critique, like satire or parody, or it can be character-based or have some sort of message. It subverts expectation and breaks what is typical of reality.

Wordplay

Wordplay is another common joke form. It relies on colorful metaphors, analogies, or double-entendres. The classic pun, that relies on different meanings of a word, is a common example. Others rely on missing information, broken assumptions, or other linguistic play.

Self-deprecating

Self-deprecating jokes rely on the comic putting themselves down and embracing humiliation. But this builds a rapport with the audience. They are laughing with you because you humbled yourself and put yourself down. There is a connection with the audience built.

Esoteric

Esoteric jokes rely on some privileged knowledge or nuance. Part of the humor is that you are in the know and in the club and understand the joke. It can be pretentious or highbrow, but it can also be in virtue of a loyal fanbase. Fans of a particular comic can know certain things about that comic that others do not, like a good friend, and that itself can be funny.

Surreal

Surreal jokes or self-referential jokes transcend common sense or norms, and it is often absurd and outrageous. They can be difficult to execute because it is difficult to get the audience onboard. They can be meta or self-referential jokes (a “call back), or they can mock and break the traditional joke form and that itself can be funny.

Physical

Physical humor is the most natural form of humor. Children are primitively in tune with this form of humor and it relies on bodily gestures, volume, and facial expressions. It conveys and universal language and communicates a message to everybody. More sophisticated forms have nuanced expressions within contexts as a further form of communication or it can even create imagery through impressions or acting.

How to tell a good joke

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Intro

You think of a joke. You muster up the courage to say it. You delivered the punchline—you expect everybody to laugh—instead, there’s silence. It’s a terrifying, gut-wrenching feeling.

Let’s see why some jokes fail and what makes something unfunny.

Poor delivery

Delivery is half the battle and a large part of what separates professional comedians from everyone else: you have to commit to your joke. It’s not easy to get over the nerves and tell jokes confidently with the self-conscious gaze of an audience. The illusion of performance is establishing a particular character or persona, and fully committing to that role. Breaking character disrupts the illusion, and this can happen from being hesitant or stumbling over one’s words. There is a flow and rhythm to every performance, and this is crucial to the delivery of a punchline.

The professional comedian’s delivery is one of the skills that are honed, and mainly through repetition and exposure. Often, this is achieved by brute force and spending lots of time on stage to make the contrived environment of being in front of a stage feel natural. The purpose is to overcome the barriers of nervousness and build confidence in telling a joke. Another effect of this is slowly developing a comedic voice, or a persona, or an ethos, or a character from which the joke is delivered. This can be deadpan, over-the-top, blue-collar, or any exaggerated way of conveying a joke.

Remember, the delivery of a joke can be awkward and still work, as long as it’s consistent with the personality of the comedian. This is where authenticity comes in. The audience is well aware if you’re being disingenuous or nervous, like a key that is flat or playing the wrong note. It disrupts the entire flow and momentum of the relationship between the comedian and the audience. 

Poor joke structure

With good delivery, goodwill can get you some polite laughs even if the joke is not that great. But not for truly terrible jokes or hacky material. You’ll get some groans or the failure may ruin your ethos or trust that you built with the audience.

A joke must build up a certain tension—sometimes called a set-up—and there must be a payoff—the punchline. There are a number of theories about the structure of what exactly makes a joke funny. But jokes aren’t made in isolation.

Jokes are tested in front of audiences. Like a focus group, you want to test your joke in front of as many different audience demographics as possible to ensure that it works. A joke that is universally funny is rare. As such, creating and testing a joke is a long iterative process. Practice makes perfect. Comedians tell the same joke every night, and you might notice that social butterflies recycle the same funny story with slight modifications. They might change a part that doesn’t work, cut out some of the wording, or add in a tagline to make it funnier.

Poor audience  

The majority of the time, it’s not the audiences’ fault if a joke fails because it’s poorly structured or badly delivered. But sometimes you have genuinely bad or hostile audiences.  

For everyday scenarios, we have to look for opportunities to fit a joke in. Unlike professional comedians who create a world on a stage, in a comedy club, in front of lights and a seated audience, our day-to-day world is often not conducive to comedic bits. Jokes can fail because it does not fit the environment.

It’s an important skill to read the room. Comedians can quickly assess which kinds of jokes work for the audience by listening to the receptiveness of the jokes. What is the emotion of the audience? For example, you probably shouldn’t tell vulgar jokes at a work meeting.

Conclusion

People spend their entire lives mastering comedy. The feeling of bombing before a crowd, the awkward silence after cracking a joke, or eliciting no or the wrong reaction from someone can be one of the worst feelings in the world. But there’s something noble about it. You took a risk and you failed. You made the attempt. You will get better.

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Draft Abstract: historical partiality, justice and favoring the winners of the present

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One difficult problem in moral philosophy is determining how our moral theory ought to approach partiality and impartiality. Crudely put, the problem is this: we have reasons to act partially towards those dear to us, and we might even have special duties to towards them, but we also have a deep intuition that morality ought to be impartial. How do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory thoughts in our moral theory?

A branching debate is between partiality and global justice. What are our obligations to those in the global community? Is it unjust to be partial to locals over those far away? Is this proximal partiality permissible?

Another branch of the debate grapples with our obligations to future persons. Should our policies treat individuals in the present and potential individuals in the future with the same amount of concern? Is it unjust to be partial towards individuals in the present over those in the future?

A topic that has not been explored in any depth is our obligations to those in the past, and our partial treatment to those in the present. If injustices have been committed, then we have a duty of restitution. However, we tend to be partial towards the “winners” of history. For instance, our duties to natives have been partial towards the contingencies of history – a duty of restitution would return the land, but the duty has been discharged haphazardly. The possible issue here is that it does not match our intuitions. Imagine, for instance, I steal a lottery ticket from you and win one million dollars; here, my impartial duty of restitution would be to give you the full sum of the winnings, and it would not be sufficient to repay you for the cost of the lottery ticket or any partial sum of the winnings. “Partiality,” in this sense, refers to the way the impartial duty of restitution is changed by our partiality towards the “winners” of history.

Does impartial morality demand that we act synchronically? Is diachronic partiality permissible? In this paper, I explicate the issue of diachronic partiality through surveying historical examples of injustices and subsequent responsive actions. I then explore how the literature in partiality and global justice, and partiality and environment ethics, might inform the discussion of partiality and history. I finally begin to sketch an argument which suggests that history partiality, though deeply ingrained into our psychology, is unjust. Note: my main aim is to suggest another avenue the partialist-impartialist debate seems to be important in ethical theory.