What is funny?  What is the meaning of funny?

Is this funny?  🙂

No, so why is this funny?  ♥ + ♥ − $ x T (time) =   😦  + 😦

It’s not?!  Do you even know what the heck you’re talking about?

If two different groups of Aliens came to Earth, one that didn’t laugh, and one that didn’t cry, which group would you trust the most?

Which group would you hang out with?

Can an entire “article” be written solely in the interrogatory, with no declarative statements at all?

How long would you keep reading if you sensed–suspected–knew! that the author was probably not going to state anything, but keep asking fucking questions?

At what point would you stop and DEMAND content?

“Stop asking me all this bullshit!”

Does our need for content imply a preexisting lack of it inside us?

Would a world without questions be better than a world without statements? And if so, how could you possibly communicate that preference?

Funny is incronguity. Funny means that two or more systems of thought or perspective are in conflict with each other with nearly equal appearances of plausibility, facts notwithstanding. The King who slips on the banana peel is, for that moment, both King and Fool. And that’s funny. Right until he stands up and looks in your direction. Then, years later, it gets funny again.

If the two (+) equipoised perspectives are equally reasonable, the result is called “amusing.”

If the perspective you already agree with is favored by the connotations and biases of the joke, the result is called “funny.”

If the perspective you disagree with is favored, the result is called “offensive.”

But if one of the perspectives is obviously stupid and yet can be twisted into making “more sense” than the obviously sensible perspective, the result is called “hilarious” and “comic genius.”

Funny equals enjoyable cognitive dissonance.

There’s your frikkin’ bald-statement content. Or do you now prefer the questions?

Alan Brech 2012