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View submission: When is a joke not a joke?
I've contemplated the concept of humour quite a bit and come to a few realizations.
One thing is that I came up with the theory that there's a number of ways comedy works. It can be unexpected, anticipated, or expected.
Unexpected is when it comes out of nowhere and you laugh because it was so random.
Anticipated is when all the pieces are set up and the comedy moment just puts them together. Sometimes you can see the joke coming, but it's not fully formed until the end.
And expected is when you can see the joke from a mile away and already know the punchline but it's still funny. This one is tricky and only works in certain scenarios - like hearing a funny joke that you've heard before.
In addition to that is that in order for something to be a joke, there needs to be an element of untruth. In many situations the audience must assume that the joker teller doesn't actually believe in whatever the punchline espouses, and is merely saying it for comedic effect.
It's the element that changes a comedic set complaining about (men/women/politics/etc) from being a hateful rant to being funny. The disconnect between what the person would actually say versus what they said is what causes laughter.
If the comedian actually believes what they're saying, it stops being a joke, and starts being either sad, angry, or merely confusing and upsetting.
Of course some of this lies in the eye of the viewer - I might not find one person funny, simply because I subconsciously don't believe their comedic persona is fake.
There's nothing here!