Quotulatiousness

August 16, 2018

QotD: Anatomy of a joke

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Nicholas @ 01:00

Friends have inside jokes. When an outsider or newcomer asks “What’s so funny?” sometimes the only serviceable response is “You had to be there” or “You just don’t get it.”

But the truth is, that’s not true. You could explain the inside joke so that any outsider could understand it. What’s much harder is explaining it so that the outsider feels it. This is a common insight when it comes to jokes. Explanations of jokes are like dissections of lab animals: In order to demonstrate how they work, you have to kill them.

Jonah Goldberg, The Goldberg File newsletter, 2016-10-21.

Related posts:

  1. QotD: The Progressive comedy pause
  2. QotD: Midwest white trash spotting guide for coastal elites
  3. QotD: Gaelic
  4. The anatomy of the standard “kids these days” moral freak-out story
  5. It’s the same joke over and over again … but it’s funny because it’s true

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