What Laughs at What? Mary Douglas on Humour | Hacker News Reader

What Laughs at What? Mary Douglas on Humour

epochemagazine.org

I have never understood humor in the sense that most people seem to. I have my own little world of things I find funny that almost nobody else does, and it has been at times a bit alienating. I laugh inappropriately, when it shouldn't be possible to "subvert" a situation. I make really stupid meta-meta-meta-jokes that are only funny to me because I've thought about the meta beyond what anybody finds value in.

But this analysis of humor makes sense. Subverting control. I suppose that's what it has always been for me, only I'm subverting a control nobody else cares about, or I'm subverting control that is in place in some context for very good reason, and therefore it's not funny when I try to break it up. Perhaps I don't deliver it with the right control.

Anyways, I found this analysis useful. I've tried to analyze humor before and got nowhere, and this is the first time anybody else's analysis has made any real sense to me. Thanks for posting.

That is intriguing. We all laughed at a joke that noone else thought was funny, but your situation seems more extreme. Care to write more about your experience?

If you have a specific question I could answer it, but I think it ultimately boils down to the way I look at the world in general. I feel far removed from it, like I am borrowing someone else's human body and my "soul" (or essence, or whatever) doesn't have the experience of millions of years of evolution to back up my human DNA. It feels like I was dropped here by mistake, if that makes sense. I think everything can be extrapolated from that.

Not sure what it's caused by, but the whole thing is really apparent in social situations (which often include a lot of joking around). I never have been able to "sync up". My humor is scaled way way up, kind of like if you could hear God's laughter as he observes the universe, in the Russian style. It's not relevant to anything anyone cares about.

I hope that makes sense.

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