Save the world one Dad joke at a time

[Applause]

hello fellow pixel people

and for those of you watching this in

the future welcome back to the pandemic

right now the world has a lot of

problems and

we have to solve them i believe that a

good place to start

is by laughing back in april of 2020

when our cold reality was starting to

set in my fellow cheese club members and

i

were trying to tackle some of those

problems the cheese related ones

and yes you heard right i am a member

and the vice president

of the cheese club at binghamton

university

we were trying to figure out how we

could operate virtually

because unfortunately you cannot eat

virtual cheese

we tried brainstorming brain writing

mind mapping etc

with some success but after a while it

seemed like we hit

a wall and our energy seemed to dim

so i said something that i thought would

be funny to brighten the mood

i said y’all hear me out we hire

a goat we give it a cute little outfit

and parade

parade it around campus like a show pony

we pimp it out maybe even live stream it

i said this as a joke i didn’t think we

could actually do it

since it’s something we had never done

before

but after the initial laughs we wondered

what was stopping us

from bringing a goat to campus and so

we did there she is

in all of her glory it was the most

successful event we had done

all year we’re doing it again this year

and this time we’re making

t-shirts so

i know what you’re thinking you have

goat to be kidding me

yeah i am not a professional comedian

but me trying to be funny during that

ideation session

worked out pretty well right now a new

idea

is more powerful than ever due to

improvements in technology

the world is changing rapidly some of

the top jobs in demand right now

are jobs that did not even exist a

decade ago

and as technology continues to improve

exponentially

our education systems may not be able to

keep up with these new fields

and in the industries that already exist

businesses are adapting

every day every business is looking

for the next new idea that is going to

give them a competitive

advantage in an ever-changing world

so how do you become the

idea person well i only have a few

minutes

so let me talk about where you can start

i say start by working on your

humor what is being funny

essentially when being funny you’re

connecting two things

in an unexpected and creative way

otherwise known as

incongruity theory for example

why did the chicken cross the road

because the chicken behind it didn’t

know how to socially distance properly

thanks for the pity laugh

connecting the chicken to the pandemic

usually the joke is about something

people care about and

if done right it leaves your audience in

a better mood

and more interested if the joke is

successful it demonstrates

that not only do you understand the

issue at hand but also

that you can get into the mind of your

audience

which is all these things are extremely

important for ideation

humor can retrain your mind to

understand things and

see them in a new perspective by

increasing your ability to connect

we see this phenomenon in a study

conducted by barry quatrolowitz at mit

the researchers had students

professional designers

and improv comedians come together and

do a cartoon caption humor test and a

product design test

the comedians generated 20

more ideas than the professional

designers

and those ideas were rated 25 percent

more creative

they discovered that the games the

improv comedians used to practice

could be easily adapted to generate

design ideas

because they promoted associative

thinking

which increased idea output by 37

percent when implemented

humor also has a way of being able to

identify problems

superiority humor the type of humor that

focuses

on mistakes like this stand-up routine

about how bad airplane food is

usually can identify problems

whether it’s directed at the comedian

other people

or other things and somebody who is able

to

identify problems has a better chance at

solving them

so humor and ideas can go hand in hand

now comes the time to ask yourself are

you

funny do you think that other people

think that you are funny

do you think that i’m funny and it’s

okay if you said no

to any of those questions i get that dad

jokes don’t float everybody’s goat

boat the important thing to remember

is that humor is a skill something that

if you intentionally work at

you will eventually improve on and if

you really feel that being funny is not

in your wheelhouse

at all you can also be a facilitator

of humor for example you

can laugh you can audibly

show your appreciation when someone says

something funny

or better yet you can contribute by

sharing a relevant tick tock or internet

meme

this may seem small but it can help to

build an environment

that rewards creativity encourages

others to participate

and can leave your listeners in a

generally better mood

research conducted at northwestern

university found that simply increasing

the mood

of volunteers by having them watch a

comedy film increased

their likelihood of having a coveted aha

moment they were better at solving a

word association puzzle

than the volunteers who had watched a

horror movie or a boring lecture

humor in group settings has its benefits

there as well

for example telling a joke can quell

general anxiety

and help to remove mental blocks

and in group ideation sessions it can

help build group cohesion

and combat group performance anxiety

whether you’re in a group or alone with

yourself

anyone can be funny and everyone can

participate in humor

not just class clowns and comedians and

on that note

we are much less alone than you might

think and that is because of something

that we all

have the phone our generation

gen z has had the privilege and

the curse of growing up with a super

computer

in our pocket and this has created one

of

our most defining characteristics one

could argue and that is

our brand of humor if you go to youtube

or twitter or reddit or any social media

you will find a community

of people of strangers from across the

world

one-upping an already funny joke into

something that is

cry-worthy hysterical by being wildly

creative

from tick-tock trends to reddit threads

i

have attempted to demonstrate that here

today

by gathering a group of my friends and

having them scroll through my camera

roll

to find a photo and coming up with a

funny caption

so this is the photo that they chose

which i thought was a great start

because it looks like my soul

is leaving my body so i’ve censored

their names with gamer tags

so anonymous seahorse 34 responded with

that moment after the waiter says enjoy

your meal

and you reply you too

i relate to highly chilly slaps

responded with whoops i accidentally

sent that text to my mom

satin salad responded with when your

teacher assigns you 30 pages of writing

and all of your other teachers already

assigned 30 pages of writing

don’t even get me started and bootleg

teletubby

responded with when you’re forced to

listen to

another dad joke ouch

and then they made me into a clown

this is very reminiscent of what you

find on social media

you find people taking ideas and

contributing to make them better

even if it is just for a joke and don’t

get me wrong

the comment section can be a very scary

place but when people

begin to contribute in a rewarding way

something that may have started out as a

joke

might turn out to be a solution to a

real

problem one of my favorite examples of

this

is when tiktok creators took a single

video

and ran with it until it was a fully

fleshed out legitimate

musical a musical that raised

over a million dollars for charity for

entertainment workers

struggling in the pandemic this is just

one example of how our ability to share

and build on the ideas of others can

yield solutions

to real problems because of this culture

that we have created some can argue that

we may have

the most developed sense of humor of any

prior generation

and with some of the most significant

problems in human history

resting on our shoulders like the

climate crisis

systematic racism global public health

growing global poverty

etc who’s to say that we aren’t

also the best equipped to deal with them

and yes

these problems are a far cry away from

making somebody laugh but in doing that

in creating sharing connecting

we learn and we get that much closer

to real solutions so

start laughing start trying to make

other people laugh

and by the next time that you’re trying

to come up with the next revolutionary

idea that’s going to change the world

it’ll come to you thank you