Is it true that bad things are only funny when they happen to someone else? I don't get the psychology behind that. I mean, don't they have any sympathy or compassionation for the less-fortunate people? From my observation, this phenomenon only, or most commonly, occurs among teenagers, particularly those I classify as "immature". So is it just the simple common behaviour that can be found in all ages? or is there something unique going on in the person's mind as he laughs his head off? What do you think? Looking forward to any response or comment.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Thanks
It's always amusing when it happens to somebody else. Yet the moment it happens to you...you aren't laughing no more. Maybe it's just a natural reaction?
If we have sympathy for every misfortune that happens to someone else, then we would be in a constant depressed/sympathetic state. Laughing is a way to vent our emotions.
I think it depends on the misfortune too. If it is a minor inconvenience that happened to the person, it could be funny but if, say, someone dies in their family, most people won't laugh.
My opinion I only laugh at others' 'soft' misfortunes, not the 'hard' ones. For example; I always laugh at those who slip and fall on ice yet not seriously hurt. It's almost as if I laugh because I think to myself, 'You moron, don't ya know to be more careful on ice?' Kinda like laughing at the imperfections of being human i.e. we know ice is slippery, we know to be cautious, but in spite of our knowledge we still fuq up. The humor I enjoy in others misfortunes are a realization and proof that we [humans] are imperfect.
We keep stretching that envelope. In works of fiction we've gotten to the point that we'll laugh at just about any misfortune, no matter how sorrowful. Remember Arnold Schwarzenneger dropping the bad guy off the side of the bridge in "Commando" after telling him, "What's important to you right now is not who stole my weapons [or whatever, I can't remember the details]. What's important to you is gravity." And then when Rae Dawn Chong asked him, "What did you do with the guy?" he answered, "Oh, I let him go." Know anybody who didn't laugh at that one? Twice? How about: "Oh my god, they've killed Kenny!" Need I say more? We're sixty and we laugh at that. You kids who find wrestling and "Jackass" entertaining must have conniptions over South Park. What gets me is that people who love the Three Stooges and the roadrunner dropping an anvil on the coyote's head always say, "Puns are the lowest form of humor." Puns are purely cerebral, fun with the language itself. Puns are not about anyone suffering or being embarrassed. They're about phonetic coincidences that provide illogical juxtapositions. Humans are the only animal that can even understand puns, much less find them amusing. It seems to me that puns are indeed the highest form of humor.
I remember seeing a European study a while back whereas laughter, but especially laughing at another's misfortune, was proven to greatly relieve stress, and much more so than other laughter. I have been looking like crazy to find the study on the net, but have been unable to Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! but if anyone finds it, please post it.
Remember Woody Allen's dictum: "Tragedy plus distance is comedy." Oh, and remember this: within twenty years of the Holocaust, Hogan's Heroes was on the air. EDIT: The guy who played Colonel Klink was a Jew who'd fled Hitler. Another actor had spent time in a concentration camp.
Jon Stewart has made a fine art out of shaving that distance. He made a joke based on the decapitation of the American in Iraq (by inference, not direct allusion) the very next night, and got riotous laughter. I think the punch line was something like, "OK, that's settled. You just can't out-psychopath a bunch of angry Islamic fundamentalists."
I think laughing might be a form of ego inflation....that's the sentiment that I observe most strongly when I laugh at something - as if we are above the object of laughing in some form. Laughing is an entirely social thing, I think...
