What Makes People Laugh
Transcriber: Mayse Alves Jordão Santana
Reviewer: lisa thompson
What makes people laugh?
Well, generally speaking,
jokes make people laugh.
Oxford Languages describes a joke
as something someone says
to cause laughter or amusement,
particularly a story
with a funny punch line.
Now,
I always thought I was
a quite funny guy, to be honest.
When I was leaving my old school
and my friends asked me if I was worried
about going somewhere new,
I said, “Worried?
Of course I’m not worried.
I’m a funny guy. People always
get on with funny guys.”
So I got to my new school,
and I did what I always do: I made jokes.
The only difference
is the jokes I were making
were being received like this …
(Laughter)
Just a long, painful, awkward silence.
And when your defining
personality trait falls away,
you have an internal crisis.
You try and understand
why it’s not working.
So I kid you not:
I was writing down things I was saying,
that weren’t being received well,
telling them to my old friends
who would find them hilarious.
(Laughter)
And that got me thinking,
what makes something funny?
Generally, a joke involves
a setup and a punch line.
The setup would be,
“Why does the chicken cross the road?”
The punch line would be,
“To get to the other side.”
Then I started thinking
of more complex jokes.
A friend of mine got a bit of flak
for a joke he told.
He was with some friends,
and somebody said,
“I don’t think you should ever
make a joke about 9/11.”
And my friend said, “I agree.
My cousin died in 9/11.”
The other person went, “Really?”
My friend said, “Yeah, he was
the best pilot Al-Qaeda had ever seen.”
(Laughter)
The setup of that joke
is that his cousin died in 9/11,
and the punch line
is that he was the pilot.
What’s meant to make it funny
is the suspension of disbelief.
You have the listener
think he’s going one way
when in reality he goes another.
But why was that joke so divisive?
Why did some people
find it horribly offensive,
while others found it utterly hilarious?
I think it’s because
of the premise of the joke.
It’s about an international tragedy,
and some people think there are
certain topics you can never joke about,
whereas others think
you can joke about most things,
as long as it’s done in the right way.
Others try and split it up further:
Only gay people
can joke about gay people,
only black people
can joke about black people,
only Muslims
can joke about Muslims.
And I feel that as a society,
we’re becoming more and more socially
and politically divided
than we ever have been,
and that when people try and split up
who can make these jokes,
they lose sight of why they’re doing it.
They try to restrict jokes
to try and stop people getting upset.
Whether you think that is
an unachievable or achievable goal,
it’s what they’re trying to do.
If a joke is genuinely designed to harm
or oppress another group of people,
maybe that joke shouldn’t be said.
But if people are just trying
to have a laugh, why cut them down?
Shouldn’t the goal
be to maximize human joy?
We’ve all done it.
Whether it’s make a joke about a bomb
at an airport, or make light of death,
just because something’s inappropriate
doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.
Under regimes like the Nazis
and the Soviet Union,
the population were oppressed,
they were told what they could
and couldn’t joke about.
Do we really want a system like that?
Of course not.
We want to spread as much joy as possible.
So, what is the point?
What am I trying to get at?
My point is, if you hear a joke
and you write it off
as offensive immediately
just because about
the controversial topic,
maybe stop and think:
is the joke offensive,
or is it just the topic?
Likewise, if you keep making
jokes and no one’s laughing,
maybe stop making those jokes.
At the end of the day, isn’t the point
of making jokes to make people laugh?
(Applause)