Good jokes depend on the teller's technical skill as well as commitment to the performance. A good joke elicits in its appreciative audience such a powerful response that it sometimes entails a full-body convulsion.
1. Why do guys feel such a powerful need to be funny? 2. How do so many guys who aren't funny get through life believing that they are?
1. Having someone laugh at your jokes is immensely flattering -- if your audience is laughing, they think that you are intelligent and appealing, because it's really hard to be funny without being both.
2. Without getting into all the gender-relations analysis of whose fault it is (which I haven't got any worked out thoughts on), women flatter men a great deal in romantic relationships, and in social relationships generally. If a guy isn't funny, but does have girlfriends or female friends, odds are he's heard a lot of laughing at his jokes regardless of how lame they are.
here's what i think the problem is. guys, among their (mostly male) peer groups, have a complex system of in-jokes, movie and tv show and even video game references, that aren't even necessarily that funny, but become a cultural cue for "it's time to laugh now" rather than actually being contextual or particularly situation-appropriate humor. girls who haven't been around them, obviously, find this stuff baffling. so they wish that they could find a girl who would laugh at these jokes.
i hung around with a bunch of guys last summer who were constantly making homestarrunner references. all. the. time. i probably might have found one or two of them attractive if it weren't for this. it's like, there are more than 5 funny things in the world, people. but i imagine they would have liked to hang out with girls who 'got it.'
The solution to the above problem is to get the girls in on the jokes, obvs.
I usually object to the characterization of such references as attempts to be funny, though; I tend to see them as a means of reinforcing the groupness of the group.
I think to get to the root causes of this situation you need to start by asking why it is so many women seem inclined to cite "a good sense of humor" or "makes me laugh" as an important desiderata in a relationship partner.
7: you know, the problem might be that a lot of women don't have much of a sense of humor, but they think the reason they aren't laughing is because guy in question isn't funny, but maybe it's just because they're too busy checking themselves out in the mirror or worrying if their ass is too big.
Ok, MY, that's two votes for that's what women want. But that doesn't seem like such a hard question: it's fun to laugh, so someone that makes you laugh is good to be around. No?
People laugh as a sign of group formation and empathy. In social situations, just because people laugh does not mean what was said was funny. Most of the time people laugh at objectively unfunny comments such as "I see your point" and "Put those cigarettes away".
It also is a power thing. College professors and bosses can get people to laugh at the stupidest god damn things.
Within a relationship, humor is also a means of communication. It is a way to express potentially negative emotions and feelings in a plausibly deniable manner.
Yeah, but lots of things are fun, and lots of other things, while perhaps not fun, are good qualities in someone you'll spend a lot of time with. Why single this out?
But then doesn't that answer question 1? We try to be funny because we want to make people around us feel good.
In my case there's perhaps a certain discomfort with silence, and the feeling that what I say to fill it shouldn't always be serious. Connected perhaps with the fact that I don't lurk, anywhere. "Mouthy" I've been called.
There's also the question of funny as in funny offhand comments or witty observations, or as in the telling of jokes, which is much more of a performance.
To echo Wolfon, humor seems like an especially poor choice. If what I really wanted to do, after all, was laugh at funny jokes I wouldn't have spent time last night hanging out with two of my buddies -- I would have gone home and watched an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO on Demand. Non-humor positive personal attributes (kindness, sex appeal) are much harder to replicate with television/movies/internets and so forth.
as an answer to why women say they wants someone with a good sense of humor, maybe it's because a truly well-honed wit is a sign of intelligence in a way that, say, constantly pontificating on Sartre is not (as in, less annoying).
people care about finding people who laugh at their jokes because it's a sign that person is comfortable being with them and thinks they're fun to be around.
I think you're right. I called it flattery above, which soumds more negative than I meant, but laughing at someone's jokes means that you like them: either you're genuinely amused, or you like them them enough that you'll laugh for them even though the comment wasn't amusing. (And the second type of laugh can be sincere -- intrinsically not-all-that-funny injokes are a means of confirming "we all like each other, we're laughing on our shared social cue.") If you're telling jokes to someone who isn't laughing, that's a strained social relationship.
Speaking of the philosophy of humor, I can't be the only one here familiar with Kant's bad jokes. From the Critique of Judgment:
Suppose that some one tells the following story: An Indian at an Englishman's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale opened, and all the beer turned into froth and flowing out. The repeated exclamations of the Indian showed his great astonishment. "Well, what is so wonderful in that?" asked the Englishman. "Oh, I'm not surprised myself," said the Indian, "at its getting out, but at how you ever managed to get it all in." At this we laugh, and it gives us hearty pleasure.
1. It makes women laugh. Happy women are fun to be around. Plus, I think there's a sense that being funny is easier than being physically attractive, or wealthy, or an intellectual.
2. I think it's mostly because a lot of humor is based on in-jokes, so if a guy is just hanging out with his buddies there's probably a lot he can say that cracks everyone up without working too hard. Outside of that context, he may be boring as hell (ever try to explain an in-joke?)
3. Why single out humor and not other happy-making-properties? One, in a personal ad, it's kind of purposefully vague; everything else is pretty vague, too. "Athletic"? "Romantic"? "Sense of humor"? Generally non-specific niceness. Two, I think a good sense of humor is sign of other good qualities; insight, willingness to put things in their proper perspective, indicative of an ability to relax.
And there are more such jokes. It reminds me of this joke, which I reproduce below for the amazon-impaired:
A Sikh walked into a travel agency in New Delhi, and said to an agent, "I wish to purchase an airplane ticket to the Netherlands. I must go to the Haig-you." "Oh, you foolish Sikh. Not 'Haig-you'. YOu mean 'The Hague'." "I am the customer and you are the clerk," replied the Sikh. "Do as I ask, and hold your tung-you." "My, my, you really are quite illiterate," laughed the agent. "It is not 'tung-you'. It is 'tongue'." "Just sell me the ticket, you cheeky fellow. I am not here to arg."
Well, there's the question of why women all seem to be looking for a man with a good sense of humor. I would argue that in a well-functioning social or romantic relationship, you're going to have to laugh for all of the signaling reasons we've discussed regardless of whether there's anything funny to laugh at, but the laughter is more pleasurable if what you're laughing at is actually funny. (Not saying that laughter at unfunny things is necessarily insincere or forced, just that it's less fun than laughing at actual wit.) Also, you just laugh more when you're with someone who's actually funny, so all of the signalling we discussed is more intense, and the relationship feels (and maybe is) better and stronger. (This is the most humorless discussion of humor since that joke Kant told.)
Women want someone funny because the opposite is so dire. A lot of guys try to be funny, and being with a guy who tries to be funny, and isn't (at least to you) is excrutiating.
The desire for a person who'll make you laugh seems to be an incident of American culture. There was an episode of This American Life (transcript), for example, that gave anecdotal evidence that laugh-making is not as highly valued in Russia:
ALEX: And [...] she just went on a rant about Americans. And she was like "Americans, Americans have no idea what it is to fall in love, and Americans, I never understand it, Why do you always say 'He makes me laugh.' Why is that so important, 'He makes me laugh'. Everyone in America I've ever met, all they say, when you ask them how their relationship is, 'They make me laugh' as if that is the greatest thing in the world." She just, you know, went off. As if I had said, many times, "I just want someone to make me laugh."
Yeah, SB, I've been resisting complicating things too much, but in Iran for example, making people laugh is more of a role--you're the clown or joker--than an activity that everyone engages in.
A priest at my parents' parish once gave quite a long homily on Marriage and Oh These Young People. Being very self-congratulatory as he recounted the experience, I might add: when a young couple asked him to officiate at their wedding, he asked her why she liked the young man, she replied, "Oh, he makes me laugh," and the priest said "You should find a comedian then, not a husband."
It was one of the ruder homilies I've heard. I'm blaming Boston.
I think that LB is right about the social signal aspect. Except for strained laughter--which is worse than silence--you have to smile to laugh, and that means you trust the person you're with. (There must be some anthropological/ evolutionary psychology (of the non-bogus sort) angle here.)
Men like this for a couple of reasons. (1.) At the most basic, crass level, they're not going to get anything, if the woman doesn't trust them. (2.) They feel good about making someone happy, because they like the person. Making a woman comfortable is a measure of one's worth as a man. Can he make her feel safe and secure? And as a worthy creature she deserves to feel that way.
But really I think that (1.) has the most explanatory power.
23 is right, and is the reason no one has made the obvious, unspoken in-joke. Ogged is one of the great straight men of all time (ATM?). He's the Jack Benny of the blogosphere.
I knew a priest with a gorgeous singing voice. I would have listened to him sing the mass over and over, if I had had the opportunity. Sadly, he disappeared soon after to complete some silly academic degree.
"Objectively unfunny" is editorizing, but "I see your point" and "Put those cigarettes away" are not funny comments. Some cartoonist proposed the distinction of hume, humor and humest, where hume fulfilled many of the functions of humor without actually being funny. Most of what we laugh at is hume.
Yes, but...how things are said, with what intonation and angle of the eyebrows, makes a big difference, which doesn't change the general point, but makes me suspicious of particular examples.
"Objectively unfunny" is editorizing, but "I see your point" and "Put those cigarettes away" are not funny comments.
When you say "are not funny comments", you're repeating the same mistake that leads you to think that "objectively unfunny" is legitimate. The comment, qua funny, is inextricable from the context, the manner said, etc. Or: to say that the phrase "I see your point" is not funny might be true, but it's misleading; what's relevant is the total funny act in the total funny situation.
I think there's an alternate explanation to both Q1 and Q2 alluded to in #40, 41. Women don't particularly want a guy with a great sense of humor. They simply say it because they are expected to say it - every woman before them has said it - and it is more socially acceptable to want a man for his sense of humor than for his looks, wallet, enormous feet, etc. Which leads us to #2: there are a lot of men out there who have been selected for looks, wallet, enormous feet, etc., who have been told (or assume) they were selected for humor.
Re: 56, I read somewhere the tongue-in-cheek hypothesis that women don't want a funny guy; they want that hot guy at the bar with the $1200 shoes who they're actively fantasizing about to ALSO be funny.
I think 56 is right. A social expectation for women to say they're looking for humor leads to male belief that humor is extremely important leads to female belief thaty they should laugh at unfunny jokes to avoid crushing the poor men's souls leads to a plague of unfunny jokes and fake laughs.
but we (at least some of us) really are looking for humor. i once had a crush on a professor that was, i believe, solely because he was fuckin' hilarious. he wasn't particularly attractive, a lot older than me (and i don't have a "thing" for older men or anything), and i didn't know him personally. so.
My wife married me in good part because I make her laugh, even when she hadn't known that she needed to laugh. Sometimes this requires pulling my pajama pants to my armpits and strolling around, crotch thrusting vigorously, but these are the sacrifices we make for our spouses, no?
That's not the dance. The dance involves stomping like a sumo wrestler, shaking my ass to an impromptu song of my choice (and often composition), and wild arms-in-the-air gesticulation. Farting noices have been know to make an appearance.
Ladies, I'm sorry, but there is only one of me, and I'm taken.
The explanation that men effort to be funny because it wins them mates seems to fall short to me because it lacks an explanation of the ubiquitous positive reenforcement which humor gets.Certainly there's lots to be said for humorous people in general. And humor seems to be a trait the one can work one without real devoted effort, so it's something a lot of people can achieve. If listening to viola players gave me knowledge of how to play the viola, I'd be a viola player, and woo women with my viola.
Why do some guys try to be funny when they're not? It's unlikely that someone is always unfunny. A few success here and there in a dry spell can keep you going....And there are a lot of social benefits. Being the center of attention, for instance. There is a certain respect accorded to those with sharp wits. One needn't, shouldn't perhaps, be a clown, but some funny comments here and there are perhaps necessary for climbing social hierarchies. Part of it is certainly that wit often pokes fun at others, which elevates one's own status by noticing something others may have missed.
How so? I can think of a couple things this could mean.
As I recall, it seemed to involved me listening to myself talk and laugh at my own anecdotes and feel very narcissistic and strange while he just nodded earnestly at me.
No No.. nor can you. Not a-shaking at you, just at the thought. I have my problems with our northern cousins. Its not so much the lack of humour, as what is considered funny! brrr....
Google's translating software tells me that "Leck mich, Leute!" means "Leaking me, people!" I doubt that however, and assume it means, "Screw you guys!"
I am sure I saw "Hogan's Heroes" dubbed in German on German satellite, which was very, very strange.
I once saw a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode dubbed in German on Austrian television and all of a sudden Captain Picard seemed like this awful Nazi barking orders at everyone that would, do doubt, lead to massive death and suffering.
Good jokes depend on the teller's technical skill as well as commitment to the performance. A good joke elicits in its appreciative audience such a powerful response that it sometimes entails a full-body convulsion.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:23 AM
1. Why do guys feel such a powerful need to be funny? 2. How do so many guys who aren't funny get through life believing that they are?
1. Having someone laugh at your jokes is immensely flattering -- if your audience is laughing, they think that you are intelligent and appealing, because it's really hard to be funny without being both.
2. Without getting into all the gender-relations analysis of whose fault it is (which I haven't got any worked out thoughts on), women flatter men a great deal in romantic relationships, and in social relationships generally. If a guy isn't funny, but does have girlfriends or female friends, odds are he's heard a lot of laughing at his jokes regardless of how lame they are.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:32 AM
How do so many guys who aren't funny get through life believing that they are?
I take it the joke here is too obvious?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:32 AM
here's what i think the problem is. guys, among their (mostly male) peer groups, have a complex system of in-jokes, movie and tv show and even video game references, that aren't even necessarily that funny, but become a cultural cue for "it's time to laugh now" rather than actually being contextual or particularly situation-appropriate humor. girls who haven't been around them, obviously, find this stuff baffling. so they wish that they could find a girl who would laugh at these jokes.
i hung around with a bunch of guys last summer who were constantly making homestarrunner references. all. the. time. i probably might have found one or two of them attractive if it weren't for this. it's like, there are more than 5 funny things in the world, people. but i imagine they would have liked to hang out with girls who 'got it.'
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:39 AM
But, then, silvana has terrible taste in men.
Posted by sexualchocolate | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:40 AM
The solution to the above problem is to get the girls in on the jokes, obvs.
I usually object to the characterization of such references as attempts to be funny, though; I tend to see them as a means of reinforcing the groupness of the group.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:42 AM
I think to get to the root causes of this situation you need to start by asking why it is so many women seem inclined to cite "a good sense of humor" or "makes me laugh" as an important desiderata in a relationship partner.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:42 AM
7: you know, the problem might be that a lot of women don't have much of a sense of humor, but they think the reason they aren't laughing is because guy in question isn't funny, but maybe it's just because they're too busy checking themselves out in the mirror or worrying if their ass is too big.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:44 AM
Wait, is silvana a woman or a very bitter man?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:45 AM
Ok, MY, that's two votes for that's what women want. But that doesn't seem like such a hard question: it's fun to laugh, so someone that makes you laugh is good to be around. No?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:46 AM
People laugh as a sign of group formation and empathy. In social situations, just because people laugh does not mean what was said was funny. Most of the time people laugh at objectively unfunny comments such as "I see your point" and "Put those cigarettes away".
It also is a power thing. College professors and bosses can get people to laugh at the stupidest god damn things.
Within a relationship, humor is also a means of communication. It is a way to express potentially negative emotions and feelings in a plausibly deniable manner.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:47 AM
Yeah, but lots of things are fun, and lots of other things, while perhaps not fun, are good qualities in someone you'll spend a lot of time with. Why single this out?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:47 AM
i've often characterized myself as a straight-acting gay man trapped in a woman's body.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:48 AM
9 is excellent. Also this, "a lot of women don't have much of a sense of humor," doesn't ring true. My exes are a lot funnier than I am.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:48 AM
But joe o, I'd second Ben's 6: those don't seem to be the kinds of things people really mean by "funny."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:50 AM
"Objectively unfunny comment" sounds like it's imparting information and is a possible characterization, but really it's not.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:50 AM
But then doesn't that answer question 1? We try to be funny because we want to make people around us feel good.
In my case there's perhaps a certain discomfort with silence, and the feeling that what I say to fill it shouldn't always be serious. Connected perhaps with the fact that I don't lurk, anywhere. "Mouthy" I've been called.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:50 AM
Why single this out?
Because laughing=things are going well in a way that other fun things don't. I think.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:51 AM
17 to 10. You guys move fast!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:51 AM
There's also the question of funny as in funny offhand comments or witty observations, or as in the telling of jokes, which is much more of a performance.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:52 AM
To echo Wolfon, humor seems like an especially poor choice. If what I really wanted to do, after all, was laugh at funny jokes I wouldn't have spent time last night hanging out with two of my buddies -- I would have gone home and watched an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO on Demand. Non-humor positive personal attributes (kindness, sex appeal) are much harder to replicate with television/movies/internets and so forth.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:53 AM
20: yeah, an important distinction. Witty=great, telling jokes=fucking annoying.
Really Weiner, you're a talker? Huh.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:54 AM
re 14
The reason your exes are so funny is because you subconsiously set them up for the jokes. My wife does that too.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:54 AM
hmm.
as an answer to why women say they wants someone with a good sense of humor, maybe it's because a truly well-honed wit is a sign of intelligence in a way that, say, constantly pontificating on Sartre is not (as in, less annoying).
and we women like smart boys.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:54 AM
So if laughing = having fun & comfortable
people care about finding people who laugh at their jokes because it's a sign that person is comfortable being with them and thinks they're fun to be around.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:55 AM
I think you're right. I called it flattery above, which soumds more negative than I meant, but laughing at someone's jokes means that you like them: either you're genuinely amused, or you like them them enough that you'll laugh for them even though the comment wasn't amusing. (And the second type of laugh can be sincere -- intrinsically not-all-that-funny injokes are a means of confirming "we all like each other, we're laughing on our shared social cue.") If you're telling jokes to someone who isn't laughing, that's a strained social relationship.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:56 AM
What are you talking about, ogged? I tell great joke! For instance. I know a great one about Cleopatra, too.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:56 AM
Just to note, LB's point 1 in #2 is a better version of what I was trying to say.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:57 AM
26 --> 18
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:57 AM
Speaking of the philosophy of humor, I can't be the only one here familiar with Kant's bad jokes. From the Critique of Judgment:
Who would laugh at that?
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:59 AM
Are we coming to a consensus that humor/laughing are more valued for what they signal and represent than "in themselves"?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 10:59 AM
Germans don't count, Matt.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:01 AM
1. It makes women laugh. Happy women are fun to be around. Plus, I think there's a sense that being funny is easier than being physically attractive, or wealthy, or an intellectual.
2. I think it's mostly because a lot of humor is based on in-jokes, so if a guy is just hanging out with his buddies there's probably a lot he can say that cracks everyone up without working too hard. Outside of that context, he may be boring as hell (ever try to explain an in-joke?)
3. Why single out humor and not other happy-making-properties? One, in a personal ad, it's kind of purposefully vague; everything else is pretty vague, too. "Athletic"? "Romantic"? "Sense of humor"? Generally non-specific niceness. Two, I think a good sense of humor is sign of other good qualities; insight, willingness to put things in their proper perspective, indicative of an ability to relax.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:03 AM
And there are more such jokes. It reminds me of this joke, which I reproduce below for the amazon-impaired:
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:05 AM
Well, there's the question of why women all seem to be looking for a man with a good sense of humor. I would argue that in a well-functioning social or romantic relationship, you're going to have to laugh for all of the signaling reasons we've discussed regardless of whether there's anything funny to laugh at, but the laughter is more pleasurable if what you're laughing at is actually funny. (Not saying that laughter at unfunny things is necessarily insincere or forced, just that it's less fun than laughing at actual wit.) Also, you just laugh more when you're with someone who's actually funny, so all of the signalling we discussed is more intense, and the relationship feels (and maybe is) better and stronger. (This is the most humorless discussion of humor since that joke Kant told.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:07 AM
32: what about the great German viola joke? Was sind die drei Lagen auf der Bratsche? Erste Lage, Notlage, und Niederlage.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:08 AM
Women want someone funny because the opposite is so dire. A lot of guys try to be funny, and being with a guy who tries to be funny, and isn't (at least to you) is excrutiating.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:11 AM
The great classic Wolfson joke seems to me the 'palimpcest'. I'm still chortling.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:11 AM
37, but would the guy try to be funny if he didn't think the funny were such a desideratum?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:12 AM
The desire for a person who'll make you laugh seems to be an incident of American culture. There was an episode of This American Life (transcript), for example, that gave anecdotal evidence that laugh-making is not as highly valued in Russia:
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:13 AM
Yeah, SB, I've been resisting complicating things too much, but in Iran for example, making people laugh is more of a role--you're the clown or joker--than an activity that everyone engages in.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:16 AM
A priest at my parents' parish once gave quite a long homily on Marriage and Oh These Young People. Being very self-congratulatory as he recounted the experience, I might add: when a young couple asked him to officiate at their wedding, he asked her why she liked the young man, she replied, "Oh, he makes me laugh," and the priest said "You should find a comedian then, not a husband."
It was one of the ruder homilies I've heard. I'm blaming Boston.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:18 AM
I know some funny priests.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:19 AM
We can blame that on Boston, too.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:20 AM
I know some funny priests.
Were they Jesuits?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:21 AM
One is. (Both in Boston, as it happens.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:22 AM
Do the Jesuits even count as Catholic any more?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:23 AM
Do the Jesuits even count as Catholic any more?
In my limited experience, actual Jesuits don't think that's a funny question.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:26 AM
I think that LB is right about the social signal aspect. Except for strained laughter--which is worse than silence--you have to smile to laugh, and that means you trust the person you're with. (There must be some anthropological/ evolutionary psychology (of the non-bogus sort) angle here.)
Men like this for a couple of reasons. (1.) At the most basic, crass level, they're not going to get anything, if the woman doesn't trust them. (2.) They feel good about making someone happy, because they like the person. Making a woman comfortable is a measure of one's worth as a man. Can he make her feel safe and secure? And as a worthy creature she deserves to feel that way.
But really I think that (1.) has the most explanatory power.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:30 AM
23 is right, and is the reason no one has made the obvious, unspoken in-joke. Ogged is one of the great straight men of all time (ATM?). He's the Jack Benny of the blogosphere.
Posted by andrew | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:32 AM
I knew a priest with a gorgeous singing voice. I would have listened to him sing the mass over and over, if I had had the opportunity. Sadly, he disappeared soon after to complete some silly academic degree.
I don't remember whether he was funny.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:32 AM
Re 16
"Objectively unfunny" is editorizing, but "I see your point" and "Put those cigarettes away" are not funny comments. Some cartoonist proposed the distinction of hume, humor and humest, where hume fulfilled many of the functions of humor without actually being funny. Most of what we laugh at is hume.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:37 AM
Hume was funny! Probably the funniest of the great modern philosophers.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:39 AM
Most of what we laugh at is hume.
Yes, but...how things are said, with what intonation and angle of the eyebrows, makes a big difference, which doesn't change the general point, but makes me suspicious of particular examples.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:40 AM
"Objectively unfunny" is editorizing, but "I see your point" and "Put those cigarettes away" are not funny comments.
When you say "are not funny comments", you're repeating the same mistake that leads you to think that "objectively unfunny" is legitimate. The comment, qua funny, is inextricable from the context, the manner said, etc. Or: to say that the phrase "I see your point" is not funny might be true, but it's misleading; what's relevant is the total funny act in the total funny situation.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:46 AM
I think there's an alternate explanation to both Q1 and Q2 alluded to in #40, 41. Women don't particularly want a guy with a great sense of humor. They simply say it because they are expected to say it - every woman before them has said it - and it is more socially acceptable to want a man for his sense of humor than for his looks, wallet, enormous feet, etc. Which leads us to #2: there are a lot of men out there who have been selected for looks, wallet, enormous feet, etc., who have been told (or assume) they were selected for humor.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:46 AM
Re 55
I see your point.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:51 AM
Re: 56, I read somewhere the tongue-in-cheek hypothesis that women don't want a funny guy; they want that hot guy at the bar with the $1200 shoes who they're actively fantasizing about to ALSO be funny.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:53 AM
Person: "doctor, doctor. I feel like a needle"
Doctor: "I see your point."
Posted by guilty | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 11:54 AM
I think 56 is right. A social expectation for women to say they're looking for humor leads to male belief that humor is extremely important leads to female belief thaty they should laugh at unfunny jokes to avoid crushing the poor men's souls leads to a plague of unfunny jokes and fake laughs.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 12:18 PM
but we (at least some of us) really are looking for humor. i once had a crush on a professor that was, i believe, solely because he was fuckin' hilarious. he wasn't particularly attractive, a lot older than me (and i don't have a "thing" for older men or anything), and i didn't know him personally. so.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 12:21 PM
My wife married me in good part because I make her laugh, even when she hadn't known that she needed to laugh. Sometimes this requires pulling my pajama pants to my armpits and strolling around, crotch thrusting vigorously, but these are the sacrifices we make for our spouses, no?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 12:43 PM
That's some mating dance you have there.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 12:46 PM
I make her laugh, even when she hadn't known that she needed to laugh.
That cuts to the quick doesn't it?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 12:50 PM
That's not the dance. The dance involves stomping like a sumo wrestler, shaking my ass to an impromptu song of my choice (and often composition), and wild arms-in-the-air gesticulation. Farting noices have been know to make an appearance.
Ladies, I'm sorry, but there is only one of me, and I'm taken.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 12:50 PM
The explanation that men effort to be funny because it wins them mates seems to fall short to me because it lacks an explanation of the ubiquitous positive reenforcement which humor gets.Certainly there's lots to be said for humorous people in general. And humor seems to be a trait the one can work one without real devoted effort, so it's something a lot of people can achieve. If listening to viola players gave me knowledge of how to play the viola, I'd be a viola player, and woo women with my viola.
Why do some guys try to be funny when they're not? It's unlikely that someone is always unfunny. A few success here and there in a dry spell can keep you going....And there are a lot of social benefits. Being the center of attention, for instance. There is a certain respect accorded to those with sharp wits. One needn't, shouldn't perhaps, be a clown, but some funny comments here and there are perhaps necessary for climbing social hierarchies. Part of it is certainly that wit often pokes fun at others, which elevates one's own status by noticing something others may have missed.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 12:51 PM
Chopper: "Ladies, I'm sorry, but there is only one of me, and I'm taken."
Now that was funny.
Posted by bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 1:10 PM
62: I have done that.
Making people laugh asserts power over them. You have incapacitated them and can now go in for the kill.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 1:45 PM
I'm not laughing near text ever again. It's measured chortles for you, buster.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 1:49 PM
I takes what I can get.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 1:51 PM
I went out with a German guy who had no sense of humor whatsoever. He was a sleek honey-toned young god, though. That kind of helped fill the void.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:30 PM
So, you went out with a German guy who looked the way Greek guys think they look?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:34 PM
Yeah, he turned out to be horrible, though. Humor might be an indicator of not-psychotic.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:38 PM
On the other hand...
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:39 PM
no sense of humor whatsoever
How so? I can think of a couple things this could mean.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:40 PM
Um, where's the Hellfire post y'all are commenting on?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:41 PM
BALETED
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:42 PM
First there was one, then there were two, now there are none. Talk to Labs.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:42 PM
Thanks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:42 PM
Humor might be an indicator of not-psychotic.
If I could use comic references I'd mention the Joker and Riddler. But I can't. So I won't.
And, Gawd I hate being trite but I'll say it anyways Clowns are seriously creepy.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:43 PM
So lets restate: Non-Slapstick Humor might be an indicator of not-psychotic?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:46 PM
Everyone knows slapstick is dead.
Disappointing.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:49 PM
How so? I can think of a couple things this could mean.
As I recall, it seemed to involved me listening to myself talk and laugh at my own anecdotes and feel very narcissistic and strange while he just nodded earnestly at me.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:49 PM
AC, I have got to say this: The notion of teutonic coldness and complete lack of self-irony impinging on celtic bloodness has my head a-shaking.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:50 PM
He was German. I can't help the fact that he was German.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:51 PM
Perhaps he was saying terribly amusing things in his own language that I missed.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:52 PM
For how long did you date him?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:52 PM
About two months.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:53 PM
No No.. nor can you. Not a-shaking at you, just at the thought. I have my problems with our northern cousins. Its not so much the lack of humour, as what is considered funny! brrr....
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:53 PM
I do like German South Park. Leck mich, Leute! Ich gehe nach Hause.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:55 PM
You want to try Monty Python in German!
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 2:55 PM
Google's translating software tells me that "Leck mich, Leute!" means "Leaking me, people!" I doubt that however, and assume it means, "Screw you guys!"
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:02 PM
Lick me, people! "Leck mich am Arsch" (lick me on the ass) is apparently the idiomatic way to tell someone to kiss your ass in German.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:05 PM
Its called the "Götz Zitat" - after the character who uses the phrase in a famous play.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:08 PM
Which lead to this gem from a colleague:
"He quotes Götz, but I doubt if he has read him."
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:09 PM
"Leaking me, people!"
wd, thats awesome.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:11 PM
How would you interpret "leak me!" if someone yelled that at you on the street?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:12 PM
I am sure I saw "Hogan's Heroes" dubbed in German on German satellite, which was very, very strange.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:13 PM
How would you interpret "leak me!" if someone yelled that at you on the street?
Dialysis, bloodletting, milking?
95: That's even witty.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:14 PM
97 - I think I'd be Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation":
what? What??
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:15 PM
In honor of the day, and the current language discussion, a salute to the neighbors:
Was wollen die Franzosen?
Liberté, fraternité, Pfefferminztee.
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:16 PM
I would take "Leaking me, people!" to mean that the person was losing blood and, from the coherence of what they're saying, probably near death.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:17 PM
Of the three I propose in 99, I'm most inclined to bloodletting, but really I'd think of something like tapping a tree for its sap.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:18 PM
Loriot, who is not French, is very funny, if not widely known outside his native land.
(And speaking of in-jokes, "Die Ente bleibt draussen!")
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:18 PM
There is actually a complimetary phrase that the German language contains in respect of the French:
"Wie der Herrgott in Frankreich..."
A case of jealous respect, I think.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:20 PM
Dialysis, bloodletting, milking?
Great that dialysis is your first thought.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:39 PM
My first thought was really more along the lines of tree-tapping. But dialysis and leeches are actually employed upon people.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:43 PM
105 Although when they want to live like God in France, they tend to actually do it in Spain. Europe's a funny place, no?
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:49 PM
Certainly is: Viz Ballerman.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 3:52 PM
I will visit Europe, and remain until I can ornament my ungrammatical English with a fringe of mispronounced French.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 4:36 PM
I am sure I saw "Hogan's Heroes" dubbed in German on German satellite, which was very, very strange.
I once saw a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode dubbed in German on Austrian television and all of a sudden Captain Picard seemed like this awful Nazi barking orders at everyone that would, do doubt, lead to massive death and suffering.
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 5:34 PM
For at least another 100 years, any aggressively authoritarian German will sound like a Nazi. That's pretty cool.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-14-05 5:40 PM
Achtung, baby.
Posted by Doug | Link to this comment | 07-15-05 1:19 AM
CUPPING! That's what I wanted when I originally wrote "bloodletting". Though really cupping is just a method of bloodletting.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 07-21-05 4:53 PM