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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13604 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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Shane Gillis and the Limits of Credentialism
Comedy and the Limits of IQ Essentialism

Shane Gillis is being criticized for an SNL monologue joke about women wearing unseemly attire at the gym — this alone is totally uninteresting cw fodder — but the question of credentials got my attention. A number of the women offended at his joke have invoked their credentials to explain why Shane Gillis is obviously not a good comedian. A uniquely qualified student of comedy invokes her prestigious internship with a smirk to inform you that she knows about comedy. A graduate of comedy writing believes that her classes permit her to speak with haughty authority on comedy. A former working comic explains from a “craft perspective” why Shane Gillis’ joke didn’t work. Of course, none of these people have even vaguely approached the level of popularity of the critiqued comedian. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the foremost credentialed comedy expert in the world has made such a criticism: Harvard undergrad in writing, Princeton PhD in comedy studies, highly published in the highest-impact comedy studies journal. How seriously should we weigh the view of the credentialed against the comedian?

I am tempted to say that the credentialed should have zero weight added to their opinion due to their credentials alone. The only credential in comedy is whether you know how to make people laugh. It would be epistemically arrogant to think that “comedic authority” could ever be bestowed upon a person by way of credential when we barely know the origin and social purpose of comedy to begin with. I recently came across a cool study and overview of one set of theories on humor published last month (the intriguing bits in bold so you can skip through):

The Contents and Function of Humor Among Hunter-Gatherers

Adopting a view of humor as an evolved response to benign violations, I argue that four comic themes characterize most humor across cultures: pain and misfortune, sex and obscenity, the foreign, and the sacred. I propose that each of these themes are ultimately grounded in our evolved psychology as universal pressure points that humor can tap into. I review 745 descriptions of humor in the ethnographic record of the ten hunter-gatherer societies in the Probability Sample Files (PSF) within the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) World Cultures database, finding support for my account. I discuss the relevance of these findings for our understanding of the evolution and function of humor, arguing that humor evolved to signal and reinforce interpersonal trust and affiliation through reciprocal play with benign violations of socially charged norms and boundaries.

the benign violation theory stipulates that the violations required for humor must have a negative valence, hence mild physical mishaps like slipping on a banana peel are considered humorous while purely positive incongruities (e.g., strokes of luck like winning the lottery) are not. For something to be humorous, it must be incongruous not with our expectations of how things usually are but rather with our normative sense of how they “ought” to be. In other words, it must be appraised as wrong, bad, or threatening.

Secondly, the benign violation theory stipulates that for such violations to elicit humor as opposed to purely negative emotions, they must ultimately be appraised as benignly non-worrisome (i.e., normal, harmless, or okay). This explains why mild physical mishaps are funny while serious violations like being diagnosed with cancer are not. For something to be humorous according to the benign violation theory, two appraisals must then co-exist: a benign appraisal and a violation appraisal. By specifying that the violations required for humor must have a negative valence and including the condition of benignity, the benign violation theory builds on the incongruity theory to more accurately differentiate what is humorous from what is not

While humor is often posited as uniquely human, social play is an activity engaged in by most mammals, with an evolutionary antecedent of human laughter manifested in the laughlike panting that accompanies the “play face” of many other great apes (van Hooff, 1972; Gervais & Wilson, 2005; Winkler & Bryant, 2021). In play, animals typically benignly violate each other’s physical boundaries through play fighting, wrestling, chasing, and the like (Aldis, 1975). Play signals like the play face here ensure that violations are understood as benign, preventing misunderstandings from escalating the play fighting into actual violence (Pellis & Pellis, 1996).

testing function, allowing individuals to assess the quality of their social relationships (Winkler & Cartmill, 2026). By imposing a mild cost on a target in the form of a benign provocation while closely monitoring the target’s response, the teasing great ape can glean information about how much the target values the relationship. Reciprocal teasing banter in humans has been proposed to fulfill a similar, elaborated function: By benignly provoking each other without either party taking offense, the participants are in effect saying, “We are close enough that we can say anything about each other” (Terrion & Ashforth, 2002:72). Starting with small provocations and gradually ratcheting up the offensiveness of teases can thus be a way to build a bond of trust.

The fact that teasing, the variety of humor that is not unique to humans, is the most common subtheme among hunter-gatherers, accounting for a majority of humor descriptions, suggests that it may have been the original form of humor. It is also the variety of humor that most resembles the rough-and-tumble play from which humor likely evolved, with the physical violations of play giving way to the more abstract interpersonal violations of teasing. Just as teasing may serve a bond-testing function in other great apes (Winkler & Cartmill, 2026), reciprocal teasing in humans can take on a more elaborate, ritualized form of the same function, with two parties teasing each other as a mutually recognized signal of the strength of their relationship (Haugh & Bousfield, 2012). Not taking offence to a teasing provocation (i.e., appreciating it as benign) requires and thereby signals interpersonal trust.

Attempting humor by violating any norm ascribed social weight, not just interpersonal ones, requires and thereby signals trust that the recipient will interpret it as benign instead of malign. If the recipient responds by appraising it as benign and laughing, that signals reciprocal trust. For instance, Gusinde notes that Ona men, when by themselves away from women and children, engage in “coarse jokes and offensive remarks about women” that they never otherwise permit themselves (1931:1652). A bond is thereby forged through mutual complicity in transgression. Relatedly, Wiessner (2014) found that the vast majority of humor among Ju/‘Hoansi occurs at times of day when people are segregated by gender and age, allowing people to joke freely without overstepping the rules of respect organized along these lines.

Jokes reinforcing ingroup bonds at the expense of outgroups are not restricted to gender but also extend to foreigners, invoking the theme of the foreign. Such outgroups include other local bands or tribes with differing norms, such as the Blackfoot mocking the custom of eating dogs among the Cree (McClintock, 1968:238), or surrounding societies, such as the Mbuti mocking the rituals and institutions of their surrounding Bantu villagers (Turnbull, 1965a:294). Foreign ethnographers studying the surveyed societies commonly describe themselves becoming the butt of humor on account of their “naïvete and ineptitude” in native affairs (Dunning, 1959:ix) or their awkward grasp of the native language (Gusinde, 1931:104). The ethnographer may turn this to their advantage by playing along, becoming a participant in the humor rather than merely a subject of it, thereby engaging the natives in an unofficial reciprocal joking relationship (e.g., Cipriani, 1966:21).

humor may also be used to get away with deviating from otherwise reigning standards of behavior by couching one’s violations in humor. Most commonly, ethnographers describe humor being used as a non-comital way of violating social mores or interpersonal boundaries to indicate or fulfill sexual desire. The risk of rejection is minimized if an advance is coated in benign humorousness since it can always be brushed aside as just a joke, capitalizing on the affiliative signal of humor. Landes (1937), for instance, notes that Ojibwa men teasingly refer to their female joking relatives as “my debtor,” implying that they have sexual rights to them (p. 45). Among the Ona, “tender teasing” is similarly said to be the beginning of any love affair (Gusinde, 1931:445). Multiple observers report being bashfully taken aback when finding themselves on the receiving end of raunchy overtures from natives couched in humor, including Pryde (1972:89) among the Copper Inuit and Turnbull (1962) among the Mbuti. Turnbull, for instance, recounts how a woman marks her interest in him through a double entendre based on his nickname “the long one” (p. 141). (lol)

There are many branches of discourse to swing off from here. Did Shane’s norm violation go too far in the eyes of some women, thereby evoking their ire? Did some women misinterpret of Shane’s monologue, though filled with abundantly placating self-deprecation? Or perhaps it was clipped and they didn’t see the full monologue? Is there reduced social trust and affiliation between the genders? Has the dating crisis gotten so bad that a woman wearing lingerie underwear at the gym approaches the untouchably sacred? Was Shane’s humor better off in the company of only other dudes? Are women just not very funny (this is no laughing matter)?

There’s something else worth exploring here. If the above theories are true, then comedy seems tied to social intelligence, at least within the “competitive” comedy circuit. Humor is an accurate signal of a person’s ability to “socially read the room”, to know where others stand on trust / affiliation / values / sensitivities. This is interesting because comedic skill seems to be unattached to IQ. The most popular comedians are not at all the smartest, in fact many do poorly in school, like Gillis / Louis CK / Theo Von. There is no actual “Harvard undergrad in writing, Princeton PhD in comedy studies” comedian, and I don’t think this is from a lack of trying as it’s the perfect job for a trustfund kid and provides an extremely glamorous social life. I wonder if this is evidence for a social intelligence not adequately predicted by g factor?

And maybe one more thing worth considering. If comedy is the measure of affiliation and trust, then the oft-criticized KillTony (I mean criticized by left media) is actually a wonderful vehicle for national unity. Having men, women, foreigners etc all criticizing each other in offensive ways to laughter is the exact utility of humor you’d want if your interest was to increase affiliation and trust between citizens of different backgrounds.

I recognized the humor without finding it funny. Like the first chapters of Moby Dick, I can recognize that this was probably uproariously funny to the right person with the right background. It's ok for a joke not to land. I don't think Gillis' joke lands with women. That's fine for a joke, that's less great for a joke told for SNL.

SNL is supposed to feature humor that lands with a broadly upper-middle class American public of both genders. Perhaps Gillis is trying to expand the appeal to more than just the upper-middle class, but I don't think the joke lands with lower-middle class women either.

A comedian tried something new, it had mixed results, more news at 11.

(I think having a PHD in humor is among the most humorless things you can do. And like most people here, I weigh Logos over Ethos or Pathos when evaluating arguments.)

A comedian tried something new, it had mixed results, more news at 11.

pretty much. SNL achieved its goal of getting people to talk about it.

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