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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.
It kind of sounds like you're saying "I like X when executed well, but hate when it's executed poorly". Which is true of pretty much everything. Whenever someone writes or tells a joke, they have no idea how it will be received: it might land or it might bomb.
Sure there are instrumental functions to humour (easing tension, conveying an idea in a memorable way) but that's not what humour is for. Even if expressing a political sentiment in a humorous or satirical way made me less likely to remember it than expressing it in a dry deracinated fashion - I would still love to laugh. Laughing so hard you can hardly breathe is one of the most delightful experiences life has to offer, right up there with delicious food, beautiful music or orgasm. It needs no justification - it is its own justification.
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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.
Yes, I know, I’ve read Plato as well. I remember rolling my eyes and audibly groaning at the passage where he implores the state to regulate the musical modes people are allowed to listen to, such that music can only be used for “pro-social” ends.
Absolutely untrue. We have examples of hedonistic philosophy as far back as the Epic Of Gilgamesh; the alewife Siduri offers the advice: “Fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let days be full of joy. Dance and make music day and night… These alone are the concern of men.” In Ancient Greece, Socrates’ student Aristippus of Cyrene founded a whole philosophical school of explicit hedonism. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill were arguing about the particulars of egoist hedonism 200 years ago.
Do you genuinely believe that this is the primary reason people have danced throughout history? Not to experience spontaneous joy? I think you have a very blinkered understanding of human psychology. People fifty thousand years ago were quite capable of having fun, and of doing things spontaneously without needing to have all social action coordinated by authorities optimizing toward the “greater good”.
Again: When and by whom?
It’s so ironic, because what’s one of the most common conservative critiques of rationalist materialism? “You just want to reduce all human affairs into a systematizable spreadsheet. Your worldview leaves no room for organic human experience. You want every human action and utterance to have a quantifiable rationalistically-legible purpose, such that humans become mere cogs in a machine.” Yet to me, this is precisely what you are doing, and claiming that all the great Christian and/or Western civilizations of old were exactly like this! Where is the room for joy and spontaneity in any of this?
Why didn’t you think about it instead of “rolling your eyes and groaning audibly”? This doesn’t mean anything to me. My dog also rolls her eyes and sometimes groans and her reasoning is mediocre.
You have misinterpreted the Epic of Gilgamesh. It’s an epic, which commemorates the deeds of a heroic man who meets a variety of figures and obstacles. The very existence of the Epic is a rebuke against hedonic philosophy. Siduri is a young woman who keeps wine, both symbolic of vanity. Gilgamesh argues against Siduri and moves on. The advice of Siduri is placed in the epic so that it can be rebuked by the writers of the epic. As your first example was way off I have to assume your others are as well.
Dances were not spontaneous in European history. They were organized, the dance routines themselves were orderly, they were scheduled on a calendar, and there were rules about gender intermingling. The only people I see dancing spontaneously in joy are homeless people, schizophrenics, and characters in Hollywood movies. Even today dancing is not spontaneous. You plan to attend an event in which you dance, and you conform to the dancing tradition of the group — this occurs even if you’re a member of the Crips!
blinks
People 50,000 years ago are irrelevant.
“Spontaneity” is a late 20th century meme. But joy is a real thing, and it’s telling that we no longer speak in terms of joy today but fun. Joy is a deeper pleasure than fun. We wouldn’t say that a person who spontaneously binge drinks experiences “joy”, or the person who stands in a crowded bar jumping up and down. People experience joy from deeply satisfying experiences which don’t leave a residue of guilt but which are actually beneficial for them in every dimension (physical, spiritual, etc). There is joy around a campfire after a hike with friends, but there’s no joy in “spontaneous” unreasonable pleasure.
I never claimed that the author(s)/compiler(s) of the Epic agree with Siduri. I am saying that her existence in the text very clearly demonstrates that there were in fact people at that time who did espouse hedonism. Your claim was that hedonism is “a recent phenomenon”. Yet I have provided you with what I consider very strong evidence that it is not, in fact, recent. (And how convenient for you that you received to even give a cursory look at the other examples I provided.)
Again, they are very much not irrelevant if your claim is that fun and hedonism are a recent phenomenon. If in fact people who are the exact opposite of “recent” can be shown to have fun, your argument falls apart.
When I read Tacitus’ account of the Germanic peoples, I see a great deal of spontaneity and unstructured play/fun. You don’t have to think this is a good or admirable way to live - I think there are a lot of very unsavory things about the lifestyle he imputes to them - but to flatly state that it didn’t exist strikes me as a highly tendentious claim.
Yeah no, this is a textbook example of joyless thinking, and it makes me wonder if you’ve ever actually experienced what normal people would think of as joyful.
Look, I agree with you that people should be temperate in their indulgences! I agree that the life of a heroin addict merits scorn! To be entirely ruled by one’s passions and incapable of distinguishing between the appropriate decorum in different scenarios is indeed beastly and unbecoming. However, everybody needs to be capable of letting loose sometimes. Everybody needs moments that are unstructured, unplanned, and not directed toward rationally-legible ends. I would not wish to live in a purely “Apollonian” civilization shorn of any appreciation for simple pleasures.
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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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Humor is a socially acceptable way to critique controversial topics. Historically, clowns have special permission from their society to parody or criticize defective aspects of their own culture.
In modern society it a way to signal intelligence. If you know something is not true but you also know there are social consequences to directly stating this then you can use humor to avoid the social consequences. Humor also allows you to shift the conversation from the object level (where you could objectively be proven wrong) to a social status game that is basically subjective.
Humor also gives people plausible deniability behind their true intentions. For instance, there is a yard sign that says, “In this house we believe:…science is real…love is love…”. Someone made a parody of this sign that says, “In this house we believe: Simplistic platitudes, trite tautologies, and semantically overloaded aphorisms are poor substitutes for respectful and rational discussions about complex issues”. The parody could have several meanings beyond the literal such as: the person is not a progressive, or the person thinks politics in general are a joke, or the person just thought it was a funny sign. Parody can also sometimes provide a defense that you are just giving homage to the original work.
Humor allows you convey your ideas as emotions/feelings instead of logical statements, which makes them more receptive to some audiences.
Humor (including funny memes) is often a more memorable way to convey an idea. A funny meme is much easier to recall than some long statistical argument about a topic.
Humor shows us a clash of perspectives in our ethical framework. It undermines self-righteous absolutism. It can show us the limits of our understanding, which can lead to self-transcendence. For a further steelman see: https://youtube.com/watch?v=KcvsipxzjXw
This could be the person using humor as coping mechanism to avoid deeply thinking about their own beliefs, but it isn’t really a problem with humor itself.
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It is interesting, I've been trying to inject a little serious conversation into friend gatherings recently, because the normal mode of interaction everyone has is just riffing off cultural touchpoint du jour and relatively low level gossip over local goings on. Which is fine but my brain loses interest fast.
I don't try to force seriousness, but I'll bring up a topic that isn't blatantly humorous, make some initial contributions on it, and encourage debate and exchange, but it'll only be a couple minutes at best before someone spots a joke or humorous segue and that puts the topic back onto the riffing.
And its not like I bring up depressing topics, more just bringing up things that would require a bit more mental effort and maybe a tad bit of vulnerability. I'm not so autistic as to expect people to be comfortable announcing deep personal insights in a group setting. Humor just seems to be the way they maintain the conversation without any real attachment to it.
My rough model is that most people just really want to avoid thinking about the real world while just 'hanging out' and if the topic isn't something they can make brief contributions to without much mental effort (topics they're experts on) they just not contribute on that topic. So hard to generate engaging discussion when a particular gathering isn't intended for such.
Which is also why politics is a popular topic (if everyone shares similar beliefs) since you can just repeat the normal mantras and memes and get along just fine.
Over the past several years, I’ve gotten into the habit of introducing side jokes into serious conversations because I’ve found that it frequently extends the length of time the less-engaged participants are willing to engage in those conversations. Throw in a semi-humorous observation or a lame riff every two minutes, and it keeps things light-hearted enough that the people who don’t particularly like serious conversations will find it tolerable. Yes, it frequently slows down the conversation. Yes, it occasionally derails things entirely. Yes, it’s a bad habit to fall into during serious one-on-one conversations (which I’ve unfortunately done). But it’s saved conversations among my friends on several occasions. (There is one couple who will complain bitterly anytime we have a conversation that is more serious than sports or what people have been up to at work. It’s aggravating, but it’s given me a chance to try different solutions. Humor is the best approach I’ve come up with so far, but I’d love to hear anyone else’s recommendations.)
Humor may be the social phenomena that is hardest to be 'naturally' talented at. Requires a mix of traits that are likely rare across human populations to truly have the knack. That is to say that comedians, especially in the improv space are demonstrating excellence at a really impressive skill. And likewise, autists or others who have a hard time reading a room are handicapped to a large degree if they can't figure out how to make others laugh.
A well-timed joke is what can make any given speech, conversation, debate, or lecture 3x as memorable. A poorly-timed or poorly-delivered joke can crush the mood just as easily.
Indeed, I'd argue that a full on 70% of what we call 'charisma' is just being adept at humor. The other 30% is being good-looking.
Knowing how and when to apply humor is such a tricky thing that I'm not even sure how much you can actually practice it if you don't have the bundle of natural prerequisites to be make it work.
I like what you are saying about the importance and effectiveness of humor, but I did want to expand on some of the other points you made.
I think this formula is missing an important component of charisma, which is a sense of confidence and certainty. Charismatic people seem to have a way of being confident before it is earned. They can show up in a new situation, or setting, and not seem uncertain like most people. Since they don't appear uncertain people tend to go along with them because the logic is: If someone didn't know what they were doing they wouldn't be able to appear so confident. Someone that is confident must therefore have skills/expertise to handle a situation.
Charismatic people have a way of being confident in their actions in a socially smooth way. If someone disagrees with them they can skillfully navigate the interaction without coming across as insecure and/or an asshole.
Something that worked for me was to view humor as a clash of perspectives. There is something of an algorithm to it which is to basically compare different perspectives to find variances between them. Once you notice these differences you can start reflect on past interactions and imaginally practice different points where you could have said something humorous. This imaginal practice gave me to confidence to occasionally add humor to my communication.
Definitely agree with this addition, the ability to project confidence in unfamiliar situations is a trait I've known certain people to possess which makes it terrifyingly easy to 'get along' with them despite knowing them for a very brief time and learning very little about them.
My only pushback is that humor is still a huge part of that equation since being able to deftly use humor even in situations others would find uncomfortable is very important to appearing confident! Like you suggest, someone who is making jokes and engaging with people where others are nervous gives the strong impressive they know what they're doing.
Funny enough, though, I'm naturally suspicious of these people and it feels like I can 'see through' the facade more often than not.
This is likely because I'm a natural introvert and just autistic enough that I can ignore social cues rather than respond to them uncritically, so somebody I don't know approaching me in a situation already puts me on edge (what are they trying to sell me?) and making airs like they're a good ol' buddy of mine when I don't know them from Adam makes me shut off the normal paths they'd use to get me to like them.
And indeed, a large portion of these people are easy to push 'out of their depth' if you DO know what you're talking about and you don't care about making the interaction socially awkward. They can revert to platitudes and deflections and double down on humor to maintain their image, but it breaks their normal game plan.
Some portion of these folks are actual sociopaths seeking to infiltrate a given space, so I tend not to just let them ingratiate themselves into groups I care about without testing them.
My 'trick' has been to carefully create a particular set of expectations, and then thwart them at an opportune time with little warning.
Imagine the humor inherent when you're talking to a nice, 80 year old woman calmly knitting a scarf for her grandkids and reminiscing about the good old days when she accidentally stabs herself with a needle and lets fly with a tirade of horrifying curses and epithets like a drunken sailor, then composes herself, apologizes, and continues on like nothing happened.
When I interact with almost everybody I default to a largely professional, straightforward, grounded persona (which flows pretty naturally from my job title) and keep most of my commentary very direct and sensible, with dashes of color to show I'm not a complete fuddy-duddy. But then, once people see me as the straightlaced and perhaps unimaginative type, I can whip out some completely absurd, possibly offensive comment when there's an opportunity, with complete deadpan delivery, and people will be caught so off guard that they go silent for several seconds trying to discern if A) they just heard that correctly and B) I'm actually being serious.
Usually that's enough to get a laugh, but if not I relieve the tension by throwing up my hands and going "just kidding!" but with a bit of a wink on top.
Its a reliable method because I can always bring my own personality with me to most interactions, and I can very consciously choose the time and place to pull the card if I gauge it is appropriate with the other person(s).
The 'downside' is that it becomes way harder to surprise people who have known me for a long time with that tactic.
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You just described many uses of humor which you appreciate, then described the sort of humor you don't like. What do you need a steelman for?
Non-socialized non-instrumental uses of humor, so most humor consumption — any kind of commercial humor, whether standup or online humor.
Most humor is very much a matter of taste. The annoying guy who makes a joke out of everything and snarky online humor annoys a lot of people, but they aren't an indictment of humor as a genre. If you don't personally like standup comedy or knock-knock jokes, no one is going to be able to steelman why you should, but that doesn't make humor itself deleterious.
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I mean, to use an analogy, just because most people these days would rather eat fast food instead of nutritious meals cooked with fresh ingredients, that doesn't mean that food is bad for us in and of itself or that we could do without it.
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You seem to have already steel manned humor, just pointed out that sometimes it’s not appropriate and with a dash of how the internet tends to ruin things
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This sounds like an argument against cheap social media simulacra, not humor.
I know the kind of conversations you're talking about, and either the other person is immature, or covering up social awkwardness with humor. I have a lot of good friends who don't talk like this.
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