If you study humor you find that nothing is funny and every joke is actually mean. I’ll look for these laughter studies but iirc the conclusions are that people laugh as a form of group identification. Laughter serves as a social signal in the same way affirmative or roger does over a radio. As in, I have received the information you have transmitted and correctly understand the intended message. As social groups become more specialized or valuable, it becomes more important to the groups survival to weed out those who are not of the proper pre-requisites. Academia is a perfect example of this, and what I find most fascinating is the etymology of the word barbarian. The word coming from an onomatopoeia of what athians thought foreignors sounded like when attempting to speak greek. I can just imagine eletist Greeks making fun of people behind their back as a form of social solidarity.

Your understanding of jokes reads like it's literally insane, as if an alien was trying to understand humor. How could you possibly believe this? These unknown "studies" you refer to are clearly bunk. Anyone can disprove it in 10 seconds of looking at a list of jokes. This idea of jokes is not a fact by any stretch of the imagination.

Your retelling of "barbarian" etymology is also wrong. Apparently ancient greeks thought other people's languages sounded like "bar bar" to them. It's not what foreigners sounded like trying to speak their own language, which wouldn't really even make sense.

"The Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking peoples, including the Egyptians, Persians, Medes and Phoenicians, emphasizing their otherness, because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar..bar..;" this is how they came to the word βάρβαρος"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian#Etymology

What that wiki article fails to mention is that it was not other languages that were Bar bar but rather these other peoples accents when they attempted to speak attic greek which gave them away as being “not from Athens”. Which is why and how it was extended to all the other greek provinces as well. As an amateur attic speaker who enjoys reading texts in their original typography as well as modern interpretations I can absolutely see how the sing song nature of attic could provide difficulties to others.

This is not the original study I was looking for but similar results.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1046496410366311

As for insane, I fail to comprehend. In the spirit of good fun on hn I challenge you to provide us with 10 jokes so that we may debate their merits appropriately.

What's your source for this version of the etymology? Either Wikipedia is wrong or your version is. Either is possible but one is much more likely.

It seems patently obvious that some jokes are mean and some jokes are not. But it's highly subjective given varying contexts. A "mean" joke about someone at a roast might be considered a kindness by all involved. You could still call it "mean" but you might be the only one that thinks so.

Here's some (mostly boring) jokes. Let's see if you can point out the the meanness in each of them.

"Q: What do chemists' dogs do with their bones? A: They barium!"

"Q: What did the cat say when the mouse got away? A: You've got to be kitten me!"

"Q. What did the ocean say to the sailboat? A. Nothing, it just waved."

"Q. What did Batman say to Robin before they got in the car? A. 'Robin, get in the car.'"

"Q. What do you get when you cross-breed a shark and a cow? A. I have no idea but I wouldn’t try milking it."

"My new thesaurus is terrible. Not only that, but it’s also terrible."

> every joke is actually mean

What is a cow's favorite form of entertainment?

Going to the moo-vies.

This is perpetuating a harmful stereotype of bovine culture. You should be ashamed.

You miss the real problem: The cow is a placeholder for whichever category of persons the listener most fears.

I'd love to hear a joke that doesn't (even implicitly) victimize anyone. I suspect that even if you found one, someone else could find an interpretation that victimizes someone.

A chicken walks into a library, walks up to the circulation desk and says "Bok." The librarian is confused and looks around, the chicken says "Bok" again.

The librarian asks "You, want a book?" The chicken replies "Bok."

The librarian grabs a book from the return pile and hands it to the chicken. The chicken puts it under its wing and walks away.

The next day the same chicken comes back in and says "Bok. Bok."

The librarian looks at the chicken and says "So, you want two books?"

The chicken says "Bok. Bok." The librarian hands the chicken two books and the chicken puts them under its wing and walks away.

On the third day the librarian decides to follow the chicken to see what it is doing.

The chicken comes in and says "Bok. Bok. Bok."

The librarian asks "So you want three books?"

The chicken says "Bok. Bok. Bok."

The librarian hands the chicken three books and the chicken puts them under its wing and walks away. This time the librarian follows the chicken over fields and valleys, through a forest to a large pond. In the middle of the pond is a frog on a lily pad.

The chicken takes one book from under its wing and throws it to the frog. The frog catches it, looks at the cover and says "Readit. Readit. Readit."

I'm medically handicapped. I sometimes go through periods where I struggle with neurological impairment.

During one such period, I complained to my son that putting my damn shoes on had become the hardest part of my day. He said "Shoes! How the fuck do they work?"

I died laughing and snickered about it for weeks. Some acquaintance had recently been a jerk to me about something I had said that they didn't get and had given me the pity treatment instead of laughing with me (not at me). My son's joke sympathized with my frustration without pissing on me and it was very, very welcome.

The is an expression in my language for "loving humor". I cant translate the jokes to English easily, but basically it is sort of similar to Chuck Norris jokes - those jokes make Chuck Norris cool. Sort of, it makes people laugh while makes target look more human and makes them like target.

Like, when you joke about someone and that person adopts a joke and brags about it afterwards, because what your joke make visible about him is what he likes about himself.

Basically, you will not joke about things that make target inferior, lesser, outsider or something like that. Your joke will extrapolate what target likes about himself, people like about him and he/she is not vulnerable or insecure about.

Heisenberg gets pulled over. Cop: "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" H: "No, but I know exactly where I am!"

Jokes are often used by victims of opression as a way of relieving their pain and expressing their greivances.

Sometimes the most tactful way to communicate a terrible truth to someone who who is unwilling to confront it is to make them laugh about it.

Dave Chappelle - Police Brutality (2000)

https://youtu.be/VFHpvPwq2i8

> I suspect that even if you found one, someone else could find an interpretation that victimizes someone.

What about surreal humor? I guess you could say it victimizes the world as we 'know' it?

Being the butt of a joke and being a victim are not equivalent. Hence the distinction of "punching up" versus "punching down".

Of course it's really easy to get mixed about and think you're punching up when you're really punching sideways or slightly downwards (ie at your fellow, yet different, plebs).

Also, "up" and "down" exist relative to a coordinate system which may be implicit in your culture, but rotated in an adjacent culture.

"Up" generally refers to the more powerful, while "down" refers to the less powerful. I don't know what scale of culture you're referring to - if you're just pointing out that power is not fungible/transferable across subcultures, I had attempted to account for that in my original comment ("sideways").

You can’t be serious? What is this - stand up for amateurs or HN? Oh well...

Q. What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches? A. A nervous wreck.

Q. What do you call a snowman in July? A. A puddle.

Hear about the new restaurant called Karma? There is no menu - you only get what you deserve.

Etc.