Humor and comedy are hard to define in an objective way. Everyone finds different things funny and have different thresholds for what they consider to be funny. But I believe there are several core elements that contribute to the comedic aspect of a joke, situation, or circumstance. In this essay I will lay out these core elements and discuss why and how they contribute to humor. 

From what I can tell, all comedic situations can be broken down into three core elements: the acknowledgement of relatability and familiarity, the subversion of familiarity and expectations, and relief/disjointment from reality. I propose that every single humorous situation, joke, or comedic anecdote has either one or several of these core elements. 

Allow me to break it down a little. People seem to enjoy things they find relatable or familiar. There’s a sense of inclusion that comes along with being “in” on a joke that I assume is a result of us being social creatures. That along with the fact that our brain is hard wired for pattern recognition, it makes sense that we receive a feeling of gratification when presented with a relatable or familiar situation. This is the core basis behind memes and inside jokes. You may realize inside jokes are not inherently funny. Perhaps you were in a situation where you were on the excluded end. The actual content or comedic value isn’t as important as the shared moment or memory that binds the joke. On the other end of the spectrum you have trends and collectively accepted jokes. Meme culture has allowed us to relate to obscure topics via association. The way memes work is they take a topic, and regardless of its inherent comedic value, associate it with something we are familiar with in an attempt to deconstruct it. This is thus funny because our brains are able to enjoy drawing connections to the things that the meme is attempting to point out. Moreover, memes have an implied message that is accepted by society. For example we’ve chosen to associate Nickleback with bad music irregardless of our personal tastes toward the band. Public perception has been established and this resonates with us. That is why sometimes strawman memes or memes that are too niche aren’t funny. Because they have fallen outside the realms of what can be implied. Humor by repetition or continuity also works this way. This is why when you draw the card “Biggest Blackest Dick” in Cards Against Humanity, it only becomes funnier when someone draws the “Bigger Blacker Dick” later.

However, this sort of engagement that stems from familiarity and relatability only goes so far. But what really jiggles our brain is the sudden subversion of that. Jokes that work by hammering the same concept over and over again can increase their effectiveness by providing a twist at the end. You’ve heard of subversion of expectation before. It’s pretty well known as one of the foundations behind comedy. It takes the idea that we are preparing for a familiar outcome, but there is a perversion to the status quo. This kind of humor stems from the twist. This can range from complete disconnect to partial disconnect. Humor like puns, satire, and exaggeration, are examples of partial disconnect. The premise of this kind of comedy starts by luring you in with something you are familiar with, but then cleverly tying it in with a tangentially related thing. Oftentimes this is done in a clever way, in the sense that the connections can be drawn but it is not an obvious one. Stand up comedians deploy this tactic all the time. They tell stories and anecdotes, but there will always be a brilliant comparison or exaggeration that gives a representation of their accounts. But then on the other side of the coin, you have extreme disconnects. This kind of humor thrives on opposites. When two scenarios that don’t belong, meet in the middle. This is why that meme with Tony the Tiger threatening to kill a stoner with his bare hands can be so funny. The relation between any of the words in that sentence is absolute nonsense. The situation is pure absurdity. While they’re not for everyone, absurdity when crafted correctly is very popular among the current youth. The key is to recognize true randomness and selective randomness. Shuffle features in music apps aren’t actually truly random. They’re actually specifically written to find songs that are less similar to each other to emulate what we perceive as “random”. True random can certainly lead to situations where two similar songs play one after the other. Which to us humans, feels less random. So in order to make the shuffle feel more random, we have to make the algorithm less random. This is also applied to humor. True “haha so random XD” scenarios aren’t guaranteed to strike humor. As a fundamental degree of connectivity is required. Absurdity only exists when we can draw at least one connection and recognize the lack thereof everything else. Cursed images like beans inside a shoe filled incites more reaction than a pile of tax papers and frisbees. Because we desperately recognize that shoes should not be filled with beans while we are indifferent to frisbees with tax papers. Neither pair are inherently more or less random than each other. 

The last core element to comedy is relief from reality. This basically when there is a disconnect between your reality and actual reality. A lot of dark humor falls into this category. The nature of dark humor is that the basis is always some sort of terrible situation or event. There is no intrinsic comedic value. But when you divorce it from reality and treat it in a way without the context of actual suffering, it can be funny. Hitler was a terrible person. But when you see a gif of a hitler animation with cat ears and captions that read “uwu can i haz poland” you smile a little. Because this ridicules Hitler. In this context you are stripping away all of the terrible things that he has done and diminishing him into a joke. He has become pure cringe. At this moment we rob him of his historical impact, and replace it with absurdity. Self deprecating humor is another example. You call attention to very real things, actual struggles and tribulations. But you take away its power by bringing momentary relief. You remove its context and all the seriousness that is associated with it. For a moment, it’s funny because you aren’t actually suffering. It’s the separation from reality. If your friend trips over and gets hurt, you show concern. But if your friend trips over and does not receive any sort of major injury, you laugh. He could have gotten greatly hurt and that would have been terrible. But he did not, and thus the notion that he could have gotten hurt suddenly becomes so much more funny. This separation from reality protects your mind from thinking of the actual consequences to negative things. This is also how “snarky” and “mean” attitudes can be used for humor. By removing actual malicious intent, you’re relieving yourself from the negative aspects. Satire, parodies, and such can often use such methodologies to create humor.

Comedy in the real world is almost always a combination of these three core elements. Great comedy seeks to stitch these core elements in a way that has fluidity.