When Does Dark Humor Stop Being Funny? - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/when-does-dark-humor-stop-being-funny
In either ninth or tenth grade, my friend Dan and I found a book of “Truly Tasteless Jokes” on the cafeteria floor. Our teenage psyches were quickly mesmerized, and we spent the majority of lunch reading it cover to cover. I laughed at one dead baby joke in particular (which I can’t repeat here). It involved a blender. To see if I was a psychopath for taking delight in dead babies, I asked the cartoons editor for the New Yorker, Bob Mankoff, for his opinion. He’s had plenty of time to ruminate on what makes a good joke, and he assured me that I was not a psychopath. Louis C.K., he points out, often gets giggles from depraved thoughts. He has a joke where he asks the audience to consider the love child molesters must have for molesting children, given the punishment if caught. “It asks us (...)