Is there really any science to making comedy?

Question

I’ve heard some say there is a “science” to making jokes and comedy. Is that true?

In: 0

Answer 1

If there weren’t, humor wouldn’t be reproduceable so comedians wouldn’t exist – no one would be able to be funnier than anyone else.

There’s a VSauce video that suggests humor “tests unspoken common knowledge between the teller and the audience” which separates social ingroups and outgroups, and I find this is the most consistent common thread among virtually all humor. Bad humor does this in really unsubtle ways (worst case scenario being blackface,) good humor does it in novel ways and often frames old information in a new context.

Currently the funniest thing I’ve ever seen is this satirical infographic about Hitler ([https://www.reddit.com/r/196/comments/zsi6sw/hitlerule/](https://www.reddit.com/r/196/comments/zsi6sw/hitlerule/)) I highly suggest reading it before finishing this comment as I’m about to spoil the joke.

So ultimately this meme follows the same formula I described. There are several instances of unspoken (well, sometimes spoken) common knowledge here.

Overuse of modern buzzwords and lexicon (toxic, cishet, boundaries) and the juxtaposition between the cute infographics and simple language versus the seriousness and complexity of the subject matter – this is ultimately a commentary on how information is diluted, oversimplified, and made more politically correct and advertiser friendly (especially in the way that it makes gross understatements about the severity of the historical events it describes,) even at the cost of being disingenuous.

Last, the transition into a Casper mattress ad cranks up the commentary about being advertiser friendly and disingenuous. It takes the fallacy of Pepsi Kendall Jenner ad (specifically how it attempted to commercialize social change) and uses it as a punchline to deliver things that are hinted at with more subtlety throughout the beginning of the infographic.

There’s a huge social commentary here, but what I really like about it is that it starts subtle enough that it’s not immediately clear that it’s satire before ultimately satirizing what it’s making fun of by becoming a caricature.

Of course, there are plenty of other things to humor, such as comedic timing and utilizing shock (shock humor on its own is lazy, but shock remains an important ingredient in a well-rounded joke.)