“What a person laughs at says more about thier heart than what they claim to believe.”

Anonymous

I always thought I was perfectly understood, that people really “got me.” But after a few recent conversations, it dawned on me that not everyone thinks like me, nor do they find funny what I find funny. I am beginning to come to grips with the fact that humor is in the eye of the beholder.

The conversation I was having was like any other conversation: I was sitting at a large table with a group of male friends, we were talking about life and ideas, and somehow we got on the topic of humor. Some of the men at the table were in my generational age range (30-50) and some were slighty a bit older (55-70). One man said he recently was told to watch something on Youtube called “Trololo”; he thought it was hilarious. I agreed.

Across the table sat an older man and he asked us both, “What is Trololo?”

If you have never seen Trololo, it is a weird, random, music video that has been out for a decade and it is meant to strike you as funny. There is no rhyme or reason, it just is. Think “The Lawrence Welk Show” meets a Russian vampire who loves to sing non-sense with a cheesy grin. Mix all of that together and somehow the end product is perfect odd-ball random hilarity. So I tried to explain this to my older friend and his response was a blank face which eventually turned into a bewildered chagrin.

The humor missed him completely.

Take another case in point: I was online discussing a very interesting topic with a friend, the differences in tastes between men and women. It was a fun discussion and I thought it was rather humorous pointing out how men and women , at times, see the world completely differently. For instance, did you know women like eating healthy meals more than men do? And we joked a bit about that.

Well, well, well, did you also know you are not allowed to joke about that anymore. Especially on a public forum, there now is an unspoken rule online, you must not laugh at any one’s differences and idiosyncrasies anymore. If you are not careful, it could actually be hate speech! In fact, because of what I wrote, I was accused of being a hater of women (misogynist) because I dared to question the motives of women. I grew up with four sisters and I would disagree with them all the time to their face and never once was I accused of being a hater. Now one little joke may get you on “America’s Most Wanted List.”

All this to say, be very careful what you laugh at.

In a 2015 article in the Atlantic titled, “That’s Not Funny!”, author Caitlin Flanagan writes about how risky comedy is no longer allowed on the college campus, “Students now want comedy that is 100 percent risk-free, comedy that will not trigger or upset or mildly trouble a single student. They want comedy so thoroughly scrubbed of barb and aggression that if the most hypersensitive weirdo on campus mistakenly wandered into a performance, the words he would hear would fall on him like a soft rain, producing a gentle chuckle and encouraging him to toddle back to his dorm, tuck himself in, and commence a dreamless sleep—not text Mom and Dad that some monster had upset him with a joke.”

Years ago I visited a college buddy at his house. I hadn’t seen him for a long time and gave him a hug, and then acting like we always did in our dorm, we began to wrestle on his front lawn. There was one major problem, his pitbull dog was also outside. And while we were having a good time messing around and laughing, his loyal dog thought I was attacking his beloved master. All of a sudden his dog started coming after me and my friend said, “Chris, run and jump the fence, he thinks you are an intruder.” I laughed at him and said, “C’mon, your dog won’t hurt me.” In dead seriousness, he looked at me with a terrified look on his face and said, “Run, he will and can hurt you.”

Did you know pitbull dogs have no sense of humor?

Ricky Gervais, the writer of the British comedy and later the American version of “The Office” detailed how humor in America is much different than British humor. You have to be more careful. He writes, “America rewards up front, on-your-sleeve niceness. A perceived wicked streak is somewhat frowned upon. I never actively try to offend. That’s churlish, pointless and frankly too easy. But I believe you should say what you mean. Be honest. No one should ever be offended by the truth. That way you’ll never have to apologize. I hate it when a comedian says, ‘Sorry for what I said.’ you shouldn’t say it if you didn’t mean it and you should never regret anything you meant to do. As a comedian, I think my job isn’t just to make people laugh but also make them think.”

Read that paragraph again. What he said is becoming quickly lost and forgotten. In order not to offend we no longer say what we mean. Since we no longer say what we mean, we have stopped thinking and say only what we are suppossed to say. Because if we say what we mean in order to get people to think, we might risk offending the pitbull dog who is listening. And no one wants to be bit.

That is the trouble with humor. And that is why no one laughs anymore.