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.
I have a dark sense of humor.
A lot of millennials and zoomers are appalled by that.
Not that I care. 😏
What is the difference between a dead baby and a truck tire?
For a while, we thought those were the funniest jokes.
Over the past year I’ve come to like Soviet humor...the humor of the Russian people under the USSR.
All of it is dark but it’s also funny!
While their humor expresses fatalism and sometimes even apathy the mere fact that such humor would persist despite government oppression speaks to their spirit as desiring freedom.
I think they were all funny. Guess I should get my IQ tested.
Back in the 60’s had a paperback “Best of Sick Jokes”. Helen Keller jokes, dirty limericks, comics etc. My mom found it and threw it out.
Then there’s Rabelais’ “Gargantua and Pantagruel” with a three-page discussion of the best material to wipe your bum with.
The Satyricon of Petronius, Boccaccio’s Decameron, etc.
They found rude frescoes in the ruins of Pompei
.
Dark humor was all we had growing up. My dad was a doc brought home the OR jokes
Hilarious.
One can run flat, the other flat lines?
President Biden, a Boy Scout, and a pastor were on a flight in a small plane. Suddenly the plane developed engine trouble. In spite of the best efforts of the pilot, the plane started to go down.
The pilot grabbed a parachute. He yelled to the three passengers that they should jump. Then the pilot bailed out. Unfortunately there were only two parachutes left in the plane.
President Biden grabbed one. He said, “I am the leader of the free world. I must live!” President Biden then jumped out.
The pastor looked at the Boy Scout and said, “My son, I’ve lived a long and full life. You are young and have your whole life ahead of you. Please take the last parachute.”
The Boy Scout handed the parachute back to the pastor and said, “It’s okay, pastor. President Biden just jumped out with my back pack.”
(This is a true story. You can look it up.)
“What is the difference between a dead baby and a truck tire?”
Nothing. They both explode when overinflated.
(I’m logging out now...)
A truck tire can take 60 pounds of air pressure before it bursts.
My favorite punch line:
“With gums like that, who would.”
I must be a genius! My kids lived in fear about my dark sense of humor.
So the Black guys scratches his head and says, “Man I gotsta try dis!!” so he walks around and bums a quarter of someone and walks up to the wishing well and thinks for a minute and throws it in and says... “I wanna be White, Uptight, and outta sight!”... Poof!! turns into a Tampon...
I have that tshirt. I wear it when teaching Russuan history.
About 90 years ago it used to be Henry Kissinger (the smartest man on earth just jumped out with my backpack)
LOL!
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