I have alluded to this humour group on FB that I am "admining" these days. It's leading me to reflect quite a bit on humour, tastes, audience perception and response, and more stuff like that.

I was trying to boil this whole "What is humour?" question down to an analytical rule, as I tend to do. Not everyone finds the same thing equally funny or even funny; not just that, what I find offensive might be funny to someone else, what someone finds funny might just be "cute" but not funny to me. Humour seems to be as complex a thing to pin down as any other aspect of human emotion or experience.

Which made me approach this question from my own perspective, as that's the only perspective I can analyse from the inside so to speak. I cannot speak for what is humour in general or what people find humourous but I should have a clue as to what I consider humour and why I find one thing funny and another thing not so much. The fact that I am largely internally coherent and consistent as a person and not random or unpredictable in matters of taste perhaps makes me a good subject ;)

So this is what I came up with: 1. Something needs to speak to my mind or make me think for me to find it funny; the more it speaks to my mind (say sarcasm, irony, word play, etc.) the more I will find it funny. 2. Something needs to speak to my heart for me to find it cute/sweet but not funny (certain cat photos/videos for example). I'll smile weakly but not laugh at this sort of stuff. 3. Something that has no mind in it I will find stupid and not funny. This is the opposite of number 1 (example may be someone falling on banana skin). 4. Something that has no heart in at all I will find vulgar/offensive. This is the opposite of number 2 (example might be making a joke at the expense of a disabled person). 5. There are some varieties of humour that combine 1 and 2, that is, head and heart in good measure. These top my list. 6. There are some varieties of pathetic attempts at humour that combine 3 and 4, that is, they are stupid as well as offensive. These are at the bottom of my list.

Interesting, isn’t it?!