The Two Kinds of Funny
We all want to be funny. We all picture ourselves walking into a party and becoming the room's centre of gravity. Girls are dying to talk to us. Everyone wants a piece of the conversation. Even though it's an overwhelming thought, we'd still want it, because it feels good. Especially the sense of humour part.
A good sense of humour is a sign of intelligence. But unlike general intelligence, you don't need to remember the facts here. Or the political history. Or the current affairs. You need a working estimate of absurdity. An estimate, because you need to indulge it routinely to bring out the laughs. But not so much that you come across as weird.
There are two ways to do that. The first: you're so consumed by the latest memes and social media trends that you know exactly how to marry the current conversation with the relevant meme. This makes you instantly funny because it's relatable. But you can only land funny if the other person consumes the same trends. That's why you reach for either a genuinely funny meme or a viral one that everybody already knows.
The second way is what I personally consider highly intelligent. That person earns my respect instantly. Here you extract humour from an actual event or your own fear, calling out the absurdity while also exposing your deepest fear. There's a sliver of truth here that nobody is willing to voice, so you wrap it in something absurdly simple, simple enough to make people laugh, but pointed enough to make them ponder it too.
One of the most famous lines is from Chris Rock, when he said, "If you can keep your son off the pipe and your daughter off the pole, you're ahead of the game." It's a profound truth told in an absurdly simple way, simple enough to make you laugh, but true enough to make you agree. That's the kind of humour I consider highly intelligent.
For that, you need to be well read, so that multiple ideas can mingle with each other. You need to know the drug scene. You need to know the story behind the strippers. You need to know the causality behind it, something you've either witnessed first hand or read deeply about. Then use your parental anxiety as fuel, and say it out loud in the opinionated way that only a parent can. Chris Rock did just that.
You need a lot of thoughts for the second kind of humour. A lot of observation. A lot of alone time. Without a scheduled solitude routine, you cannot have that kind of humour. And that's why my respect goes up a notch for such people, because the second kind will, without exception, have real depth. Every conversation with them becomes enlightening.
Nothing against the first kind, but I personally feel they're mostly superficial. Good at parties. But once the party's done, you want to drop them home as quickly as possible. The second kind isn't built for parties. They're built for the all-night whisky session, preferably with a cigarette.