{"id":319,"date":"2010-05-31T09:13:22","date_gmt":"2010-05-31T09:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=319"},"modified":"2010-05-31T09:13:22","modified_gmt":"2010-05-31T09:13:22","slug":"what-is-so-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=319","title":{"rendered":"What is so Funny?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>One line from the Simpson’s Movie that made me laugh was when Bart says “Dad, this is the worst day of my life!” to which Homer replies “Worst day <dramatic pause> so far!”.\u00a0 If Bart had said “Dad, this is the best day of my life!” and Homer had replied “Best day <dramatic pause> so far!” it would not have been funny – it would have sounded cheesy. Why is that?\u00a0 What does this tell us about how we can sometimes confuse humour and pleasure?\u00a0 If we laugh when we are unexpectedly\u00a0confronted with\u00a0someone else’s emotional distress (the basis of slapstick humour); and\u00a0we also laugh when we see other people laughing; and we also laugh when we have our expectations exceeded (the basis of surprise parties)\u00a0then\u00a0by simple association of the feeling (pleasure)\u00a0with the behaviour (laughter) we have\u00a0a recipe for collectively laughing at someone else’s distress.\u00a0 More sinister is that we can unconsciously\u00a0plan to derive laughter (and by association pleasure) by\u00a0deliberately engineering distress for others.\u00a0 Humour, like\u00a0any process, can become sick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One line from the Simpson’s Movie that made me laugh was when Bart says “Dad, this is the worst day of my life!” to which Homer replies “Worst day <dramatic pause> so far!”.\u00a0 If Bart had said “Dad, this is the best day of my life!” and Homer had replied “Best day <dramatic pause> so … <\/p>\n

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