The SECRET To Being Funny

I’ve always been naturally funny. Not because I was trying, but because of my willingness to say the obvious truth. I recognized this around age 12. People would laugh if you just said the truth in a deadpan fashion.

An easy example of this is as follows: Imagine you’re serving tables with someone, and they say, “Man, it sure is busy tonight,” and you say, “Yeah, well, Friday nights tend to be like that.” You might not think this would get a chuckle, but I’ve often found that it does.

So then why would the Opposite Observation be funny? An opposite observation is when you say the opposite of reality. So if it’s really cold outside, you say, “Man, it’s hot as balls outside.” That’s not observing reality. It’s observing the opposite. What does that share with the deadpan, truthful observation? What does that share with wordplay or with a sexual joke?

It’s a violation of expectation (VoE). At the core of every single joke is the violation of expectation. If you learn this and learn how to apply it, you will quickly become the funniest person in your friend group. Let’s dive in.

To explain expectation, we’re going to do a bit of philosophy. Think of each conversation as being contained within a bubble of expectations. Those expectations form a simple narrative. You and your fellow conversant are there to accomplish a specific goal by talking in a specific way. When your co-worker comes to your desk and asks you something, he wants information. When you go up to a girl at a bar, you’re hoping she’ll reciprocate and allow conversation to continue flowing. When you’re giving a speech, your audience is expecting to learn certain information.

These constraints and the context of a situation form a set of expectations around the conversation. It’s from these expectations that we can derive how to be funny.

One of the easiest places to make a joke is when a server comes up to your table for the second time, especially if she is a woman and you’re a man. What’s expected here? Usually, the second time around, the server is coming back up to get appetizer orders and answer any questions about the menu. She likely is about to say words she has said to thousands of other tables before her, almost like a robot.

Before she says anything, imagine saying this, “Oh, you again? If you come to our table a third time, I’m going to have to assume you like us,” with a smirk. BOOM! The expectations for this conversation have been broken. This is a bit of a leap, and has to be said with playfulness and with no expectations of her playing back, but of course, that’s like any joke.

Now, how else can we violate expectations?

Have you ever had a naughty family member? You know what I mean. Someone who makes sexual jokes? They’re so obvious, but everyone always seems to laugh, right? A friend of mine has a grandfather like this. He said that he often relies on sexual jokes through wordplay.

Imagine you’re at the dinner table and eating sushi. Your grandfather says, “I’d like to learn how to roll sushi.” You respond, “Yeah, I think you’d really like it.” Then he responds, “I’ve always been talented with my fingers.” This is great. He didn’t even say what he meant, but we all probably know what he’s referencing. That’s wordplay, and that’s a serious violation of expectation. Most people don’t voluntarily bring up sexual innuendo in front of family, so it makes it low-hanging fruit. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend sexual humor, especially in front of family. Nonetheless, the point is illustrated.

But what if the violation goes too far? How does that happen, and how can we avoid it?

Sexual humor is one where you can easily go too far, which is why I don’t recommend it. For example, if you were to make that same exact finger joke at a company meeting, it would probably go over like a nuclear missile. Your ability to detect the perfect VoE is crucial in this regard. It can both go too far and not go far enough. The Greek Philosopher Aristotle had a great term for this, and for all virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics. It was the idea of the Golden Mean.

The Golden Mean of virtue holds that virtue lies between the extremes of two character traits. For example, bravery lies between cowardice and recklessness. If someone just charged to the front during every single battle with no armor, you wouldn’t call him brave. He’s just a reckless idiot. If he hung out in the trenches the whole time and never charged forward, you’d say he was a coward.

Think of VoE in this way: it needs balance and understanding of the situation.

We understand the situation through narrative, and this is extremely important. In philosophy, there is an idea that the world is composed of chaos and order. Many of the greatest philosophers have said something like this: the world is composed of places you don’t know and places that you know. Jokes are made by creating a VoE right on the edge of order. Right on the edge of “I know what comes next.”

Things that are too chaotic and out of place cause stress. That’s why the sexual joke would bomb at an office meeting. Things like cliches have the opposite problem. They are so expected that they create no laughs. Dad jokes tend to be just right above the line of funny and are often overused. Here’s an example.

The kid says, “I’m hungry,” and the dad responds, “Hi Hungry, I’m Dad.” It’s just too obvious. If you’re looking to be funny, you need to be slightly edgy. Not cliche.

All that being said, we have one final point, and it’s one of the most important. You can be too funny, and you do not want to be the class clown. The reasoning falls under the logic of Aristotle’s Golden Mean again. If you’re too funny, that’s all you are. You’re never serious. If you’re not funny ever, well, you’re no fun. Being funny is like a balancing act. Between chaos and order. Between being a class clown and being too serious. And between cliche and transgressive.

And remember, you’re going to have to practice being funny. You’re not going to nail it every time. Each time you fail, you get more data about expectations, the Golden Mean, and narrative.

If you liked this article and want to learn more about socializing and dating, follow Vibe Dynamics or share the article with the buttons below.

Share

Subscribe now