Recently several publications have been reporting on the ‘world’s funniest joke’. In fact, this is not recent news, but the results of a unique online survey have been around since 2002. Laughlab.co.uk is a website that asked people to submit jokes and then conducted research to find out what type of humour appeals to people – across countries and cultures. Check out the world’s funniest joke and consider the question – what is funny and why.
Psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman set up the website LaughLab and invited people to submit jokes. Out of a database of more than 40,000 jokes, 1.5 million respondents were asked to rate the jokes on a scale of 1 to 5 – 1 being not very funny and 5 being very funny. Jokes belonging to various categories were considered and finally this was found to be the funniest joke in the world:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed.
The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?”
The operator says “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.”
There is a silence, then a shot is heard.
Back on the phone, the guy says “OK, now what?”
Some of the highly-rated jokes were actually puns – like this (clearly those who call puns the lowest form of wit are wrong, because people find puns very funny):
What kind of pig can you ignore at a party? A wild bore.
What kind of murderer has fibre? A cereal killer
In my book, for something to be funny, it must be original or startling or thought-provoking or intelligent or an astute observation or courageous --- or all of these things. A joke is funny it punches up – because jokes that punch down are just not funny. When a joke punches up, it calls attention to injustice or inequality; it dares to challenge structures of power and that, to me, is courageous. It makes me admire the joke and the joker.
So a standup comic making fun of his domestic help is tone-deaf and completely unfunny to me because it mispresents privilege as some delusional form of victimhood. However, a savarna caste man poking fun at his own privilege is funny – because it is self-aware and self-deprecating.
Punit Pania making Indian uncle jokes in the video above – looking remarkably like an Indian uncle himself – is uproariously funny. Studies have also shown this to be true – for a joke to be funny, the person disparaging a group should be part of that group. If a white person uses the ‘N’ word it isn't funny; it has to be the prerogative of a person of African descent to use the term for it to be funny.
Intelligent humour is funny – while there is nothing wrong with the Chaplin-eque type of falling-over-his-own-feet type of comedy, comics should work a little harder for their laughs. A unique observation, a different viewpoint, presented as jokes may startle us but they also make us laugh – precisely because they make us think as well.
Jokes should make sense to their audience – if someone tells a joke about a Minecraft YouTuber, this would sail right above my head but someone from Gen Z would find it hilarious. Similarly, a Bappi Lahiri joke would make no sense to someone in the US who is unaware of Indian music or someone who is unfamiliar with the Indian penchant for gold.
So while the guys at LaughLab could have identified the world’s funniest joke, I actually found the joke too violent for my tastes. I would conclude that humour is hugely subjective – one person’s poison is definitely another person's meat… in India, literally so.
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
