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Notes -
Can someone steelman humor to me?
I’m beginning to wonder if humor is actually bad for us. Important qualification: in-person humor exchanged between friends is amazing for connection and friendship, and so in this capacity it is instrumental toward a good thing (bonds and brotherhoods). But this is no longer the dominant form of humor. The dominant form of humor is now worthless, distracting, and frankly retarded stuff on social media. This humor serves no instrumental purpose. It’s not the teacher whose sense of humor enhances your comfort and learning. It’s not a friend whose sense of humor bonds guys together. It’s not Scott’s wordplay that makes his ideas memorable. It’s just cheap pleasure. And I think it distracts people from taking life seriously.
Have you ever been in a serious conversation where someone keeps making jokes, and it’s impossible to obtain the same seriousness again? To me that’s the Worst Thing Ever, and I think this mental state is how many people are living because humor has penetrated every social media platform. The way many friends now stay in touch is sharing an instagram reel or a meme. But this is all occurring online, so rather than reinforcing friendship it reinforces (anti)social media consumption.
While I can somewhat appreciate where this post is coming from, it is bordering on a parody of autistic rationalist overthinking. You might as well ask for a steelmanned case for listening to music, or dancing, or looking at a beautiful sunset. Laughter is an inherently positive human experience. It doesn’t require a justification. That’s not to say that humor can’t be employed toward malicious ends, just as music can be used to deliver damaging philosophical/thematic content. It’s just to say that humor and music and love and joy are, in and of themselves, indispensable parts of what makes life worth living.
The distinction you draw between laughter as a social lubricant and laughter as a commodified social media engagement-farming product has the shape of a compelling argument, but fundamentally I think that laughter is basically equally valuable whether it’s my friend making me laugh, or a comedian on the internet making me laugh. In fact the latter is often more valuable, because professional comedians are more skilled at reliably inspiring laughter than most of my friends and loved ones are.
Now, the point about how humor is often used as a crutch or a dodge in order to avoid having to be serious is a fair point. While humor is good, serious discussion and introspection are also good (just like sometimes negative emotions are valuable as a counterbalance to positive ones) and I agree with you that humor can be used as a sort of manipulative “cheat” or “exploit” in discourse. Unsophisticated observers (and often even sophisticated ones) risk coming away from a debate with the erroneous impression that the funnier and more wry/sardonic guy won, even if his arguments are worse.
There’s a case for humor being inappropriate for certain scenarios; I love dancing maybe more than almost anyone else here, but I would consider it wildly inappropriate to dance at a funeral.
@faceh makes the case below that humor is maybe the most important element of charisma. This would be very flattering for me to agree with, since I am personally quite funny. I have performed stand-up comedy, I was a member of an improv comedy team, I’ve performed in dozens of comedic staged productions and made hundreds of people laugh. Outside of my day job, I moonlight as a bar trivia host (I’ve been cagey about giving specifics about this before because of fears of doxxing, but at this point I’ve given so many other details about my life that this additional piece isn’t going to move the needle) and I’m very comfortable working a room.
Yet @Ponder makes what I think is the correct observation that charisma is very dependent on confidence, and on the ability to confidently and smoothly adapt to shifting social/interpersonal scenarios. While I have a strong sense of humor, I can really only consistently deploy that humor if I feel like I’m “in my element”. If I’m nervous or concerned that my attempt at humor will be seen as inappropriate or unwelcome, I usually clam up.
A truly charismatic person, in contrast, makes every scenario his element. He creates the paradigm wherein his humor will be appreciated. (That or he simply has such a keen ability to intuitively assess every interpersonal scenario that he just knows exactly which canned joke or humorous observation will fit any given opening.)
It’s well-known that many very funny people are also profoundly insecure and self-hating. I think part of this is that absurdity is often a major source of comedy; recognizing the contrast between expectation and reality - exploiting cognitive dissonance - is a reliable way to get laughs. However, individuals who are good at spotting absurd, fake, hypocritical, bizarre quirks in the things normal people take for granted - good at de-encrypting the comforting illusions that help normal people function and maintain emotional stability - are usually not very well-adjusted, well-socialized people. In that sense, humor could in some way be self-destructive. Making others laugh while making oneself miserable. Pro-social but personally maladaptive.
Self-deprecating comedy is an especially powerful and dangerous double-edged sword in that sense. I know I’ve resorted to self-deprecation in the past as a way of trying to seize control of the things about me that people make fun of. I can draw attention to the stuff about me that’s superficially funny and keep the conversation focused on that, so that nobody notices the much more hurtful things that they could take shots at if they were brought to light. Chris Farley made a lot of hay out of fat jokes, whereas the things about himself that he actually hated, and which he did not want people to notice or joke about, were ultimately much more destructive to him (physically and emotionally) than his weight ever was. Robin Williams (who, to be honest, was not actually consistently funny, if you ask me) was constantly bombarding his audiences with a chaotic stream of disparate humor-adjacent quips and silly voices, such that the real man at the center of it all became inscrutable.
Personally, I like to stay away from satirical/topical commentary and focus on stuff that’s far more anodyne and ideologically-empty. Either stuff that’s just harmless and uncontroversial (wordplay, physical/visual comedy, whimsical surrealist stuff), confessional storytelling (guys like Mike Birbiglia and some of Louis C.K.’s material) or stuff that’s so over-the-top self-awarely “shocking” that it can’t possibly be mistaken for sincerity (guys like Anthony Jeselnik, Jimmy Carr, etc.). Leave the actual serious shit for people to talk about seriously.
But I have asked these to myself. I’m still considering the steelman case for music. The overuse of music is problematic because it’s a superstimuli that utilizes aural emotional cues. When you listen to too many sad songs you may become desensitized to the natural aural cues of sadness (in the voices of others, primarily). At the same time, because music is simply a packaged emotional state, we have to be wary of enjoying misleading music, which presents an emotional state that isn’t beneficial or realistic. The consequences of poor music consumption are both the potential dulling of real life emotional sensitivity (listening too much) and in being carried away into a fantastical emotional state (obsessing over the wrong kind of music). There’s adolescents who experience unreasonable despair because they listen to too much music of despair, just like how in 18th century youths were captivated reading the Sorrows of Young Werther (which Dostoevsky mentions in the opening of one of his books). This is a normal line of inquiry in the Socratic and Christian West, by the way. It’s only today that we have the idea that human proclivities and interests shouldn’t be instrumental to a greater good. Dances were organized to increase communal bonding and enhance mate selection, while conveying the physical movements of peacefulness and mirth rather than aggression. Sunsets were enjoyed in a spiritual way which deterred one from pantheistic thinking. Etc.
So is doing opiates. But the reason we don’t do opiates is because the pleasure is transient and “pleasure” is a limited experience, so if we experience pleasure from opiates, we experience less pleasure from real life — which has disastrous consequences. So it is with an inappropriate use of laughter. Laughter is relief, and if you experience too much relief from the comedic superstimuli, you may experience less relief where it matters — real life. This is really the root claim… laughter can be deeply relieving, but it’s a relief that is completely unattached from anything significant.
I've always had this problem with overbearing scores in film or blatantly manipulative music that dosen't stand up artistically.
Granted that films are supposed to be emotionally manipulative experiences (why else would you ever watch a horror film?) but yeah, I really, REALLY hate when a movie's score is trying to sell me on some moment as though it is a huge deal, be it the action, or romantic elements, or some 'huge' twist, and I NOTICE I'm being manipulated because the music is telling me to feel an emotion that the film simply hasn't earned or induced with its other elements.
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is the most obvious example of this experience for me.
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