I’ve heard some say there is a “science” to making jokes and comedy. Is that true?
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Example that comes to mind
Sarah Silverman talked about getting feedback from Jerry Seinfeld, and how he told her was that she was hitting a good “laughs per minute”.
She didn’t even know that was a thing, but she said it made a ton of sense once she heard it.
What he was talking about was *pacing*. Its not enough to say some funny things and make people laugh. It was about pacing the delivery of the funny bits to evoke the laugh response from the crowd at a rate that is frequent enough to keep the audience engaged, but spaced out enough to be sustainable and make each funny thing stick on its own.
Think of it the same way a *good* music DJ knows how to pace the crowd. You wouldn’t want to just pound the crowd with the beat all night. They’d get burned out right? A good DJ knows how to build the feeling up… the hit them with some real hype, then bring them back down, then pump them back up again.
So, that’s not ALL of the “science” but as one example of an scientific aspect, pace and timing vs human attention span absolutely makes sense.
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