What is A Joke?
The following chapter is from LOL: A Beginner’s Guide to Comedy, Telling Funny Jokes, and Conversational Humor
A joke is a pattern interrupt.
A joke doesn’t always have to be something that is used in words.
- A joke is anything out of the ordinary.
One famous basketball move is the cross-over.
This is when the basketball player is dribbling one way to fool the opponent.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Then out of nowhere, the player dribbles LEFT!!
The opponent is staggered and falls for the trap.
The opponent loses balance.
This is identical to joke telling.
We want the consumer of our joke to mentally lose their balance.
The joker is going one way.
One way.
One way.
One way.
Then out of nowhere, the joker SWITCHES POSITIONS!
The abrupt change in positions creates a flux of energy in the consumer.
That flux of energy causes them to laugh.
Let’s start with a simple example and we will go more complex.
A simple example is those old-school silent movies.
In those silent movies, the person wasn’t using words.
Instead, they were doing gags.
Gags were abrupt shock entertainment.
A person is walking.
Walking.
Walking.
Walking.
Then suddenly, they get PIED IN THE FACE!
It went from ordinary to absurd.
The sudden ordinary to absurd transition was something that generated laughter in the audience.
A more complex example is during wedding time…
One time, I went to a wedding in Bangladesh.
A Bengali wedding lasts for 1 week.
On the final day, the bride is brought to a special house where she and the groom will stay.
The house has decorations, gifts, and flowers.
The bride is uncomfortable.
She is really uncomfortable because she is being eyed by many family members and friends who came to see her.
Well, we bring the bride back to the special house.
She sits on the decorated bed.
Then she begins looking down at the covers.
Clearly, she was nervous.
To make matters worse, she is surrounded by 50 people in the room who are just observing her.
One of the family members notices by her body language that she was nervous. This family member says:
‘Someone, make her laugh!’
Out of nowhere, I make a loud fart noise with my mouth.
It was abrupt…
The crowd was expecting:
- A story.
- A dance.
- Some type of performance.
Instead, they got a fart noise.
Suddenly, the bride begins laughing uncontrollably.
Once she laughs, the rest of the room begins laughing.
There are 2 lessons from this story.
The first lesson is:
Words are not needed in order to deliver a joke.
There was a tense situation. Tense. Tense. Tenser.
Then the pattern was interrupted by the introduction of a fart noise.
The second lesson is that:
We do not need to get everyone to laugh.
Instead, we just need to get 1 person to laugh and the others will follow.
Getting 1 person to laugh is a lot less daunting than getting a crowd to laugh.
By capturing 1 person, we activate a chain for the rest of the group.
A few questions to ask yourself are:
- When was the last time you made someone laugh?
- When was the last time someone made you laugh?
- Were words used?
- Or was it the mannerisms that had you chuckling?
Let me reiterate once more.
A joke is when you are going on one side…
One side.
One side.
One side.
Then suddenly, you take a turn for the other side!
