Posted on 07/19/2023 3:58:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A dark sense of humor doesn't make you a bad person—just a smart one
A man walks into a rooftop bar and takes a seat next to another guy. “What are you drinking?” he asks the guy.
“Magic beer,” the guy says.
“Oh, yeah? What’s so magical about it?”
Then the guy shows him: He swigs some beer, dives off the roof, flies around the building, then finally returns to his seat with a triumphant smile.
“Amazing!” the man says. “Lemme try some of that!” The man grabs the beer. He downs it, leaps off the roof—and plummets 15 stories to the ground.
The bartender shakes his head. “You know, you’re a real jerk when you’re drunk, Superman.”
Let’s ignore for a moment whether or not that poor rube survived his fall (if it makes you feel better, let’s say Trampoline Man was waiting for him on the ground). The real question is: Do you find dark jokes like this one funny? Sick? Maybe a little of both? Or do you prefer to stick to short jokes that are a little more wholesome?
What is a dark sense of humor?
If you laughed at that Superman joke, you definitely have a dark sense of humor. But what is dark humor, exactly? Psychologists have defined it as “humor that treats sinister subjects like death, disease, deformity, handicap or warfare with bitter amusement and presents such tragic, distressing or morbid topics in humorous terms.” If your reaction to those kinds of jokes is “that’s terrible, but I laughed,” then you enjoy dark humor. If you find yourself searching “dark humor meaning” to understand why people find the joke funny, or you react negatively to making light of difficult topics, then dark humor probably isn’t for you.
Does a dark sense of humor mean you’re smart?
According to a study published in the journal Cognitive Processing, your reaction to dark humor could indicate your intelligence. In the paper, a team of psychologists concludes that people who appreciate dark humor may have higher IQs, show lower aggression and resist negative feelings more effectively than people who turn up their noses at it. MOR To test this correlation between a dark sense of humor and intellect, researchers had 156 male and female participants read 12 bleak cartoons from The Black Book by German cartoonist Uli Stein. (One of them, which paraphrases a classic joke, shows a mortician reaching deep into a cadaver as a nurse muses, “The autopsy is finished; he is only looking for his wrist watch.”) Participants indicated whether they understood each joke and whether they found it funny, then took some basic IQ tests and answered questionnaires about their mood, aggressive tendencies and educational background.
What did the study on a dark sense of humor find? The results about a dark sense of humor were remarkably consistent: Participants who both comprehended and enjoyed the dark humor jokes showed higher IQs, and reported less aggressive tendencies, than those who did not. Incidentally, the participants who least liked the humor showed the highest levels of aggression and the worst moods of the bunch. The latter point makes sense when you consider the widely studied health benefits of laughter and smiling; if you aren’t able to greet negativity with playful optimism, of course you will feel worse.
But what about the link to intelligence? According to the researchers, processing dark humor jokes takes a bit more mental gymnastics than, say, processing a knock-knock joke—it’s “a complex information-processing task” that requires parsing multiple layers of meaning, while creating a bit of emotional distance from the content so that it registers as benign instead of hostile. That emotional maneuvering is what sets dark humor jokes apart from, say, puns, which literally pit your brain’s right and left hemispheres against each other as you process a single word’s multiple meanings but usually don’t force you out of your emotional comfort zone. Tina Fey sums up the difference pretty well: “If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.”
The takeaway: Pretty much any joke that relies on wordplay will put your brain to work—dark humor jokes just require a bit more emotional control to earn a laugh. Give your brain a spin with these jokes proven to make anyone sound smart, or, if you do want to test your black humor cognizance, consider the following dark riddles from the Reader’s Digest comedy crypt to exercise your hardened funny bone.
“‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I apologize’ mean the same thing. Except at a funeral.” —Demetri Martin
Q: What has four legs and one arm? A: A happy pit bull.
“Cats have nine lives. Makes them ideal for experimentation.” —Jimmy Carr
Q: Why don’t cannibals eat clowns? A: Because they taste funny.
“I have a vest. If I had my arms cut off, it would be a jacket.” —Mitch Hedberg
Q: What did Kermit the frog say at Jim Henson’s funeral? A: Nothing.
“If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.” —Steven Wright
Next, here are some jokes research proved to be funny.
Paddy?
5.56mm
if you add milk? Frog nog!
I also have a dark sense of humor. Even after being retired from hardware/software engineering for several years, I taught Embedded Computing in high school. The students screamed and howled at some of my quips and looked truly shocked at others. Once I told them that anyone who got below 60% on the next test would be crucified in the town square on the following Saturday morning. The rest were required to attend and should bring a packed lunch. It sure was quiet in there for awhile.
You know what one tampon said to the other tampon, huh?
Nothing. They were both stuck up bitches
hehehehheeeee!!
The year was 1974. A Moscow resident collected all the cash his family had saved for the last thirty years, and set off to the car dealership to purchase a new car. When he got there he had to sign in and pay the entire amount up front. He asked the clerk when he could pick up his car, to which the clerk replied, “March 28, 1983”. The man asked the clerk, “Would that be in the morning or the afternoon?” The clerk got angry and asked, “What difference does it make?” The man replied, “Well, I really have to tell the plumber something”.
Dan Akaroyd and the bag of broken glass.
You know how they punished Helen Keller as a child. Rearranging the furniture.
I still remember some from the early 1960s. Why do ducks have flat feet? From stomping out forest fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? From stomping out burning ducks.
Then there are those vile ones about babies. What is red and white and sits in a corner? A baby playing with razor blades.
There are others more vile than these.
“With gums like that, who would.”
Mine is:
"OK, he's dead. Now what?"
Most of you know nothing about dark humor. Dark humor is when I’m cracking jokes at my vet as he puts my dog down.
But here’s one for you. What do you call a Mexican woman with no legs?
Consuelo.
When Don Lemon’s sister drowned in a fishing accident, someone commented “I didn’t know she was also an anchor.”
That was terrible, just terrible.
How do you confuse Helen Keller?
Make her read a stucco wall
The doctor gave me one year to live, so I shot him. The judge gave me life.
Problem solved.
Anthony jeselnik is the king of dark comedy. I might have the spelling wrong but I have never heard jokes like his in a standup comedy routine. Like this. “ have you ever gone online to see the Sex offenders addresses around your house? There are everywhere. Because they are everywhere why do we always meet at my place”. Like that.
That last batch read like “Dad Jokes.”
Does anyone think this is funny? I laughed until I cried, and for days afterward just remembering it made me laugh.
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