On Humor

By Joaquin S.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines humor as “the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature and speech.” If “humor” isn’t as familiar to you, try “comedy,” “hilarity,” “absurdity,” or perhaps “drollness.” Call it what you like, but it all means that some person is attempting to be quite silly in order to get a laugh from other people. Nobody knows when it originated, but there have been, coincidentally, an insane amount of joke formats trying to explain this.

But what is my point? My point is that humour (to take the British English format) has evolved over time, declining and increasing in quality as human development does the same. The popular writer James Thurber (or, at least, once-popular writer, due to his demise in 1961) was ironically most famous for his poorly drawn cartoons in the New Yorker, but many hard-core fans remember him for his essays concerning his criticism of the English language, radio soap operas, the names people give to their dogs, and the modern state of humor. (Or humour. I type in British English sometimes when bored.)

Of course, “modern” is a stretch here, since most of his works were published in the ‘40s and ‘50s. But you can tell from his essays that humor, specifically in the ‘50s, was in a great decline due to many writers thinking it was unsophisticated and crude, therefore choosing to write tragedies and sentimental stories instead, which funnily enough ended up having weaker plots than most comedies. People liked them anyway, however, so I assume this is what keeps the Hallmark Channel in business.

But what about humor now? In the 2020s, the lover of humor has many options to choose from within the writing world, from self-deprecating comedy (David Sedaris, Jenny Lawson) to scientific comedy (Randall Munroe, Mark Rober) to satirical comedy (Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett) and of course the wide varieties of comics out there from Bloom County to The Far Side. But these writers are islands in a sea of mishmashed idiocy so annoying that Mr. Thurber might turn over in his grave if people literally did so.

Consider the infamous “That’s what she said,” a phrase popularized by the 2005 TV show The Office, designed to be the most uncomfortable experience a person can have while streaming on Peacock. Or perhaps the riotous “Ligma Balls” and the hilarious “Hey Stinky (You Just Got Hey Stinkied)” are more up your alley? Video games have given us an even larger collection of this trash, like slapping the Dark Souls “You Died” message on everything or just saying “Oof” whenever your friend wipes out on a bike. The modern era of humor is so primitive, one might think the first joke ever made went along the lines of:

“Hey Grog, would you say I should use the mammoth bone spear or the flintstone arrows for hunting today?”

“YOUR MOM! Heheheha!”

Mr. Thurber, we await your verdict.