Talk:Anti-humor

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This page was nominated for votes for deletion, but the consensus was to keep the article. See: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Anti-humor.

Contents

[edit] Edits and reverts

Andre Please read my edits before you revert. I cleaned up and sectioned many inappropriately grouped paragraphs and revised the list of jokes which subject traditional humour. 'How many babies does it take to paint a barn?' is not a subversion of a traditional joke.I have also added much technical description on the jokes. Perhaps we should include a section on 'Sick Humour' or 'Dead Body humour' to this end in the page, but I feel that the point of subverted jokes is less about jokes such as 'Because she had no legs'. The edits I made to the opening paragraph were because I felt that the style was inconcise and ambiguous. Many subjective phrases such as 'This is extremely funny' were removed for the sake of neutrality. I also heavily edited the section on the specific comedian because it seemed out of place. Again, perhaps a new section in 'Anti-humour in stand-up comedy' is called for. In all I have made made some big superficial changes, but the essence of the article remains the same. Please could we come to a compromise on this?Minglex 19:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)Minglex Please keep the punchline of the apple joke the same. There is no reason to change it. ja ja ja 23:18, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jokes

  • Those chicken jokes, besides the original of course, are not anti-jokes. They just aren't funny. Can we get some real anti-jokes? I'll try and find my list.
    • There is one in the recent X-Men movie. Storm sa"ys to Toad "Do you know what happens when lightning strikes a toad?" (lightning strikes) "Same thing that happens to everything else."
    • Agreed - they should be moved to an article for the chicken joke itself. Deco 06:53, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Good point. Andre (talk) 21:46, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

I removed the chicken jokes, as people said, they'e not anti-humor. I think someone got carried away when they saw the turkey variant and went "say, I know lots more chicken jokes", which is not really the point. JRM · Talk 11:35, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

What is the similarity between a hippo and an apple? They're both red expect for the hippo.--Taida 01:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bill Bailey will have the eggs of numbing inevitability

I'm pretty sure the blind mice joke is from Bill Bailey and should really be credited, unless he stole it from somewhere else. Can the user who added it say whether or not they heard from Bailey? Coyote-37 15:51, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

What's the question here? Bill has done spoof versions of Three Blind Mice by Richard Clayderman and Tom Waits if that's what you mean. Here is an MP3 if you want proof. Bill has also done some excellent Three Blokes in a Pub jokes, which could be included in this article. Not Josh 13:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pinky and the Brain

I added a lil addon ot the nonesense section about pinky and the brain, feel free to remove or mutliate with corrections ;p Lovok 14:00, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where does this joke fit in:

A: This is a reverse knock-knock joke, you start. B: Oh, ok. Knock-knock. A: Who's there? B: ????

What category is it? Stevage 11:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

"Subversions of traditional jokes", I suppose. Although I know that one as "Hey, I know a great knock knock joke!" "What is it?" "You start..." --McGeddon 12:05, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-humour designed to make a political point?

I can only think of one at the moment, but an example is Ian Hislop's joke (told on HIGNFY: "Doctor, doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains." "We don't have any beds."

But there are probably other jokes like that that use part of a "real" joke in order for the punchline to make a political point; if there are, is that worth putting in?

[edit] Puns

Also, what about puns? I often hear appalingly bad puns but people laugh (or groan) anyway because they're so bad. And Ted Chippington is mentioned here and a lot of his act was awful puns like "Do you want to buy some grass? No thanks, I haven't got a garden" and the humour derived from the awfulness and the audience reaction.

[edit] Neil Hamburger

What about Neil Hamburger? His unique style of anti-humor should be represented in the stand-up section. Sarnath 00:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Title

Why "anti-humor", rather than "anti-humour", which would fit with the Humour article? Mzyxptlk 18:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for move. NOW.

I am officaly proposing to move this to Anti-Humour, to fit in with Humour. No response in a while, and I'll be bold and do it myself. Sdoherty1000 03:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

This has been discussed already in the past. Andre (talk) 22:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, I thought it had, but I can't find it. Essentially the manual of style says that, if a topic is not particularly British or American in nature, it stays at what it was when it was first created. Andre (talk) 22:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. The first several significant contributions use "humor," and by past precedent an article should be left where it is unless there's good reason to move it: see [1] for an example of this. 67.185.99.246 22:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Note also that humour was originally "humor" [2] and it was unnecessarily railroaded to the British spelling. This kind of crap really irks me. 67.185.99.246 23:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Silly indeed, should be a bannable offense Qevlarr 23:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. I usually disagree with changing between American/Britisch English style, but it makes sense in this case Qevlarr 23:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed an Out-of-Place Comment

After "examples of anti-humor," the line: "Another comedian, Ken Marino, had a recurring character on the sketch show The State, who was an obvious dork, but popular at parties due to a lame, generic catchphrase." Had been written in, but it (a) didn't make much sense there, and (b) seemed somewhat subjective due to the phrase "an obvious dork." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by HJSoulma (talk • contribs) 04:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] This article could use a rewrite

This article could use a rewrite This article could use a rewrite 01:51, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Merge?

This article is pretty much the exact same as anti-jokeDboyz-x.etown 19:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List creep

The "Nonsense jokes" seems to be suffering a lot of list creep from anyone who passes by and realises they can add whatever they feel like making up off the top of their head. Is there an interesting source for the duck joke (I thought it was Lear or Carroll, but can't find anything to back that up), or other genuinely classic nonsense jokes we can fill this section with? --McGeddon 00:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been bold and deleted all the lists of jokes from this page, in an attempt to stop people from adding random jokes to the end of already-illustrative lists. Wikipedia shouldn't be a joke book. Where an example is necessary to explain an aspect of anti-humor, it's been left as part of the paragraph, but I think we can safely live without the rest. --McGeddon 12:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] unjoke

I thought this was called an "unjoke". Google seems to suggest that's a more common appelation. I couldn't search wikipedia for "unjoke", though... Should this be added as a redirect, or at least noted in the article?--AaronRosenberg 22:36, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where did this article go?

I feel like we lost the plot with this article. I remember reading this post about a year or so ago and thinking how interesting it was, and the examples of anti-humor -- while possibly exhaustive -- were helpful in understanding the concept. Now all we have is a list of names of comedians who practice the style.

The article does not stand up on its own any longer, because getting any information on this topic would require clicking to another article. Also, the concept is not well-represented in the regular "comedy" or "humor/humour" articles.

I agree that having just a list of examples is not a good choice, but having no actual "meat" to the article is no better. Maybe a few examples would suffice. Right now, this is one of the few articles I've seen on Wikipedia that has actually gotten worse. My opinion.

Bill shannon 16:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Why are all the lists gone? I understand Wikipedia is not a joke repository, but there is no better way to explain the concept than by examples. Really, this article is pretty useless without a sufficient amount of examples. Two is not at all sufficient. Qevlarr (talk) 16:14, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I have been comparing the versions pre and post McGeddon, and it turns out there are not just a lot of examples gone, but also a whole deal of text explaining that anti-humour is not just about telling jokes that lack a punch line (which could be called un-humour), but also jokes that can be funny because they are unusually long, shocking or absurd. The anti-example revisions really made this article itself a joke.... An anti-humour one, of course :) Qevlarr (talk) 17:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what pre-and-post you're comparing; I cut out most of the examples back in April, but was careful to leave enough to be illustrative, and didn't remove any variants. The current version of the article was actually rebuilt from scratch after it was deleted by a successful AfD, and so bears little resemblance to the previous incarnation. Feel free to restore it - I completely agree that "here is a list of comedians that use this type of humour" is an unhelpful way to phrase an article. --McGeddon (talk) 17:14, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Didn't see the AfD thing... That explains a lot. A lot of stuff should be restored indeed. Qevlarr (talk) 22:51, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I went ahead and "boldly" reverted back to an old (IMO superior) version of this page, but kept the current information as well, just reshuffling it within the appropriate headings. I think this looks a heck of a lot better now and is a worthwhile, interesting article. Hopefully everyone is pleased with it. Bill shannon (talk) 04:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Your bold move reverted. Please follow the most fundamental rules about wikipedia content summarized in wikipedia:Attribution. Content without references to published reputable sources does not belong to wikipedia. `'Míkka>t 15:59, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Sigh, I give up. Bill shannon (talk) 22:20, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Lazy, aren't we? It is so easy to throw a joke or two in, but to find a scholarly discussion of humor rarely someone bothers among wikipedists. `'Míkka>t 00:35, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Lazy? Hardly. What I had attemped to do was take what was already in the article (ie. the information that is posted there currently) and merge it with the actually useful information that had been posted on earlier versions (examples of jokes, the overall concept, etc). It wasn't a slash-and-burn job but rather marrying the best of both worlds. Instead, now we have glib links to examples of shaggy dog stories and chicken-crossing-the-road jokes. There is no meat in this article anymore, only hyperlinks to other articles of substance. It's like doing an article about goulash and instead of listing examples of different variations, just listing two or three ingredients and links to other goulash articles and then a second section listing Julia Child, Rachel Ray and Paul Prudhomme, who had been "known for practicing the art of goulash." In fact, the goulash article is a heck of a lot more interesting than this article is right now. Sadly, the Uncyclopedia entry on this topic is embarassingly superior. As it was, the previous article was not simply a litany of nonsense jokes, but tangible examples instead of getting into the abstractions of "scholarly" explanations. If links are the umbilical cord to any W'pedia article, then I think this one might die. I don't know if it's a sabotage job to take a once-useful article and make it delete-worthy, but as it stands now, this article has very little use for me as a reader (forget as a Wikipedian). It wasn't perfect as it was, but it was something from which to build. Leave the article as you see fit; like I said previously, the article is -- in my humble opinion -- much worse off than it was before. Bill shannon (talk) 20:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
While I agree with you that the article is poor, wikipedia:Attribution is the most fundamental rule that cannot be bent, even for the valiant call for quality. `'Míkka>t 17:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)