The Art of Manliness - #431： How Everything Is Funny Now, and Why That's Terrible

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00:01:03.660 slash manliness for the free trial and then code manliness to save 10% off your first purchase of

00:01:08.000 a website or domain. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:01:26.880 No matter where you look these days, someone is trying to make you laugh. Advertisers, politicians,

00:01:31.500 even church ministers have all become comedians, but it wasn't always like this. When and why did

00:01:35.940 the world become so funny? And what are the consequences of living in a culture where

00:01:39.860 everything has a touch of humor and irony? My guest explores these questions in his latest book,

00:01:43.940 Planet Funny. His name is Ken Jennings. Yes, Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy guy. Today on the show,

00:01:48.200 Ken shares the moment in his life that got him thinking about how humor has taken over the world.

00:01:52.100 From there, we discuss the history of humor and how it's changed throughout the ages. Ken and I then

00:01:55.900 discuss the recent advent of politicians, advertisers, and amateur Twitter comedians trying to be funny and how

00:02:00.620 the internet has changed humor. We then dig into the consequences of living in a hyper-humorous world,

00:02:05.040 including the decline of sincerity, earnestness, and even genuine gut-busting laughter. Ken ends our

00:02:09.840 conversation with a call to be more mindful of how an excessive focus on funniness can impoverish

00:02:13.880 society, our decisions, and ourselves. After the show's over, check out the show notes at

00:02:17.480 aom.is slash planet funny. All right, Ken Jennings, welcome to the show.

00:02:36.780 Hey, thanks for having me.

00:02:38.140 So you've got a new book out. It's not about trivia, which we would expect you to write about,

00:02:43.060 but you wrote about humor. And it's called Planet Funny. And it's about how humor has taken over

00:02:48.900 our culture. I'm curious, was there a moment in your life when you realized everything,

00:02:55.780 and by everything, I mean everything is funny now in particularly American culture?

00:03:01.360 I think the thing that woke me up was when airline safety videos started to get funny.

00:03:07.980 You know, because when I flew as a kid, I always was terrified of that little laminated pamphlet that

00:03:13.660 told you about the oxygen masks and where's your life jacket and where's your nearest exit. You know,

00:03:19.320 I studied that thing for an hour. And a few years ago, those safety demonstrations started to get

00:03:25.960 replaced by little videos with musical numbers, and they were full of kind of wacky non-sequitur jokes.

00:03:31.640 Delta had an 80s-themed one with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the pilot, just like an airplane.

00:03:35.700 And I remember thinking, wait, why does this have to be funny? Like,

00:03:40.640 there's nothing less funny than the odds of a plane crash, right? Like,

00:03:44.120 what is happening to us that we need jokes here?

00:03:47.220 Yeah. And besides, I mean, the other example you gave that I thought I didn't think about,

00:03:50.400 but it's true, like insurance, like car insurance, like the thing that's supposed to you use when

00:03:54.520 you get in an accident, like that's funny now, thanks to Geico.

00:03:57.860 Yeah. You know, as late as the 1960s, and this is shocking to us today,

00:04:01.280 the conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue was that funny ads didn't work. You had to stay away

00:04:06.680 from all humor because viewers would remember the punchline, but maybe forget the product.

00:04:12.760 And of course, that's all changed now. And the main thing that changed the calculus I found out was

00:04:17.500 the possibility of an ad going viral on the internet. You know, tens of millions of people

00:04:22.400 trying to watch your old spice ad just because it's got a funny guy on a horse. You don't have to

00:04:27.400 pay a cent for that product placement. People are seeking your product out and product Procter

00:04:31.920 Gamble now says that, um, old spice, isn't even a deodorant anymore. It's an entertainment brand.

00:04:37.340 The deodorant is incidental to providing a fun branding experience, which is an awful thing.

00:04:43.660 Right. Yeah. Super. So, so before we get to like explain like how we got to this point,

00:04:47.920 let's talk about like the concept of funny too, because you explore this idea of what,

00:04:52.600 what exactly is funny and how has that changed? And then how is that because of the change in humor,

00:04:59.320 why that's, uh, you know, sort of infected everything in our culture. You know, we've,

00:05:02.800 you mentioned in the book, Peter McGraw, author of the humor code, and he's like, he researches,

00:05:07.160 he's a scholar that researches humor. You talk about him in his book. He has his theory about what you,

00:05:13.500 what he thinks makes something funny, but you talk to other researchers and academics about why humans laugh

00:05:19.020 and why things are funny. So what are the theories out there about what makes something funny?

00:05:24.400 Philosophers have been arguing about this for thousands of years. What's the root of humor?

00:05:29.500 Where does the impulse to laugh even come from? Aristotle and Plato believed that it was laughter

00:05:35.300 came out of superiority. If you feel better or superior or smug towards someone else, you'll laugh

00:05:41.440 at them. You know, all laughter is ridicule. You know, to Freud, it was, it was more a laughter of

00:05:46.460 relief. You know, it was a way to express discomfort or about taboo subjects or vent uncomfortable

00:05:52.020 feelings. Today, a lot of cognitive scientists center around the idea of incongruity, two things

00:05:58.640 that don't normally go together. You know, you've seen a monkey, you've seen roller skates, but a monkey

00:06:03.640 on roller skates, uh, that's funny. So to this day, there's no consensus on, you know, where the urge

00:06:10.540 to laugh comes from or why amusement works in our brains. And it makes it hard to track down what

00:06:16.740 is funny. I think it's a moving target for one thing, you know, think about reading a, you know,

00:06:21.320 in quotes, humor book from a hundred years ago, or watching a Elizabethan comedy. You know, these

00:06:26.680 things just don't strike us as funny, even just a few years after they were made because jokes move

00:06:31.680 on. But I mean, are there jokes that, or things that are funny that have like stood the test of time?

00:06:36.040 I mean, are there things that were funny, like in ancient Rome that are still funny today?

00:06:41.380 I think so. I mean, think about somebody falling down. You know, that's, that's funny. I don't

00:06:45.700 care who you are. And I'm sure that's universal. There are written records of ancient Greek jokes

00:06:52.120 that we still tell today. The very earliest joke collection has a joke in it that was still being

00:06:58.080 told about sour politicians in the 1980s. Man goes into the barber shop and the barber says,

00:07:02.680 how would you like me to cut your hair? And the man snaps in silence. You know, that joke's thousands

00:07:07.720 of years old and it still kind of works. But I think the way you tell jokes have to change because

00:07:12.840 again, the comic sensibility keeps changing and we demand novelty. Right. Yeah. The fart jokes,

00:07:18.060 I think too, have been around for a while. My kids still think my, you know, my seven and four

00:07:22.160 year old think it's hilarious. Fart jokes, but now that was funny in ancient Greece too.

00:07:25.980 That would be Freud's theory, you know, something that they can sense is taboo, you know, even if,

00:07:30.580 I don't know if you like raised a kid by roles, would the kid think farting was funny?

00:07:34.460 I doubt it. You know, I can sense that we're uncomfortable with it and they, they, they,

00:07:39.100 they realize, Oh, I can do something with this. So, you know, for most of human history,

00:07:44.460 you know, recorded history, like there were jokes, like there were jokes you told,

00:07:48.340 and I guess comedians call them joke jokes or jokey jokes, right? Like man walks into the bar,

00:07:53.040 but like, we don't do that anymore. I can't remember the last time when I was with a group of friends

00:07:58.100 and they said, Hey, let me tell you this joke. Like that is like the, instead it's like they

00:08:02.160 pull out their phone. They like, let me show you this meme. So, I mean, like, why, why did that,

00:08:07.720 what happened? Like where, you know, we no longer tell joke jokes and this, and how did that change

00:08:12.740 in metamorphosis happen? I wonder if part of that is kind of the American ethos of cool, you know,

00:08:18.460 that came out of hipster and jazz culture, thirties, forties, and fifties. It just seems like such

00:08:22.280 an effort to create a story where a priest, a minister, and a rabbi get on a plane. I mean,

00:08:27.280 what am I, Edgar Allen Poe? Why am I writing a short story for you at dinner? Like to actually

00:08:32.220 get the organic laugh, it needs to seem cool and low impact and something that just, I thought of

00:08:36.840 off the tip of my tongue. And that's really the comic mood of today. You know, comedians goofing

00:08:41.280 around with their friends on podcasts and, you know, saying whatever crosses their mind on Twitter.

00:08:46.900 The idea that, you know, we like a more conversational vibe. We like Jimmy Fallon playing

00:08:51.140 charades with people. God help us. Right. Well, yeah. You see how the internet has changed.

00:08:55.580 One thing I've noticed in the past 10 years, like humor has gotten weird, right? It's like,

00:09:00.320 as you said, like non sequiturs, like that's like, it's pretty much what it happens on the internet.

00:09:03.980 It's like stuff that if you didn't understand the story about how that thing became in existence or

00:09:11.560 how, why it got funny, like you wouldn't get all the derivative jokes that came from it.

00:09:15.740 Here's why that happens. A joke requires novelty. You can't laugh at something the fifth time

00:09:21.060 as much as you laughed at it the first time. So comic tastes have to keep evolving so that

00:09:25.240 the kids are laughing at something their parents don't get. Like when I was a kid, we stayed up

00:09:29.020 late to watch Letterman and Saturday Night Live. And we just knew that our parents would not enjoy

00:09:33.920 this kind of crazy irony. But as that keeps progressing, the jokes have to get weirder and

00:09:39.060 weirder. So you get these adult swim shows where it's not even clear where or what the jokes are.

00:09:45.400 You know, it's, it's just kind of uncomfortable. There's online humor. Like I love this thing

00:09:50.640 called lasagna cat, which is just weirdly edited live action reenactments of Garfield comic strips,

00:09:57.240 but with very sad music and even horror movie tropes added in. And it's impossible to explain

00:10:03.200 how this is a joke. But again, that's kind of the appeal of it. We've already laughed at everything

00:10:07.060 else. The well is running dry. Right. And I mean, another point you make with the way things have

00:10:10.980 changed where things are constantly evolving at a quicker and quicker pace is that humor today

00:10:17.540 is much more fragile than it was say 20 years ago. You could tell a joke and kind of flub it,

00:10:23.680 but it would still, you could still land the punchline and people would laugh. But today

00:10:27.520 it doesn't like, if you miss like one little thing, then it doesn't, it's not funny. It just,

00:10:32.920 it falls dead and you might, it might even be offensive, right? And then you're suddenly the

00:10:38.120 pitchforks come out on the internet and you're, you're pillared. That's what you see a lot. This

00:10:42.080 made sense in my head, but yeah, humor is so ephemeral that any little thing will break it.

00:10:47.080 There's a reason why jokes don't translate well into other languages, why computers can't produce

00:10:52.020 them. You try to think of an, you try to tell a friend an onion headline that you enjoyed and you'll

00:10:56.900 realize you can't crack her up because you're not remembering it word for word. So much can go wrong

00:11:02.260 telling a joke, but we're all getting better at it. Even so, the fact that we're surrounded by this

00:11:07.420 endless avalanche of jokes on social media and streaming video means that we're all kind of

00:11:12.800 internalizing what the rhythms and the mechanisms are. And we're starting to get into a culture where

00:11:17.160 everyone can kind of do the voice of comedy, whether they really have a knack for it or not.

00:11:22.580 So, I mean, this idea also you get into is how, how one way that humor has changed is we become much

00:11:28.300 more ironic and you get into like what irony means. You talk about Alanis Morissette. I remember when

00:11:33.080 that, I was like, I think in ninth grade when that song came out and our, my English teacher was like,

00:11:38.380 that's not irony what she's talking about, but like, what is irony and why has irony infused our,

00:11:45.400 our humor today? Well, you know, irony just started out as a literary device, you know, an audience,

00:11:51.100 you know, something, you know, an oddly appropriate fate for a character in a short story or a play where

00:11:55.920 the audience knows that the guy is doomed and the character doesn't yet know he's doomed. And that was

00:12:01.740 just fine. But sometime around, you know, Vietnam Watergate, kind of the new American citizen cynicism

00:12:07.800 era, ironic comedians like Steve Martin and David Letterman started to expand irony. And so it was a whole

00:12:14.960 voice. And today it's even, you know, I don't take anything seriously, even my own comedy. And today it's

00:12:21.060 essentially a lifestyle, you know, you have people growing facial hair or buying vintage clothing

00:12:26.460 because they're not sure if it works even, but if it's kind of crazy over the top, Hey, this works

00:12:32.480 ironically, people voting ironically or telling, you know, offensive jokes, ironically, it's almost like

00:12:38.940 we want to be insulated from any of the possible impact of our, of our convictions, you know? So

00:12:47.140 lifestyle irony is a way to kind of skate through life unscathed without having to commit to really

00:12:53.320 believing or thinking anything seriously, which is pretty awful when you think about it.

00:12:57.160 Yeah. I mean, cause it, it takes out some of like, I don't know, the sincerity of life,

00:13:01.800 right? Like when, like, when was the last time you actually felt genuinely like excited about

00:13:06.420 something? Because if you look too excited, well, then you're a square or something's wrong with you.

00:13:11.600 Right. Or just, or actually telling a friend how much you appreciate them or love them,

00:13:15.620 you know, like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, no way. You know, we're very comfortable kind of riffing and with

00:13:19.880 light banter. I noticed this recently, my, my daughter fell and broke her wrist and, you know,

00:13:25.480 a lifetime of, you know, ironic social media had really prepared me for kind of funny quips to try

00:13:30.540 to distract her from her, from her owie as the doctor put the cast on it. But when something

00:13:35.160 seriously goes wrong, you know, I had a friend whose kid was in a car accident and I realized I had

00:13:40.080 nothing to say, you know, all these, these years of, uh, these years of banter and social media

00:13:45.120 quips and riffing with my friends have left me really ill-equipped to, to actually get under the

00:13:50.940 skin and like, you know, share my real feelings and find out what this guy needs. And I, I do miss

00:13:55.520 that kind of earnestness.

00:13:57.120 Yeah. Yeah. And you all, I mean, one of the, one of the more poignant moments in the book,

00:14:00.420 you talk about that sort of how things being infused with humor sort of, I don't know if the,

00:14:05.020 what's the word where desensitizes you to those other things you talk about, you watched a clip

00:14:09.300 of like a, an accident and like your initial like reaction is like kind of chuckle, but then you

00:14:13.880 realize that no, what happened was actually really terrible and I should be feeling something else.

00:14:18.060 Yeah. It was one of these dash cam videos and it was actually, it was awful. It had been near my

00:14:22.060 house and I knew that a bystander had been killed. And, but yet when the link appeared on the

00:14:26.720 newspaper site and started running and I saw the weird slapstick, you know, I kind of involuntarily

00:14:32.660 laughed and I realized I did think it was funny, but that didn't excuse it. You know,

00:14:38.560 things can be funny and still not be helpful or good. And I think that's an important realization

00:14:44.340 in comedy as well, but, um, a joke might work and still do something awful.

00:14:50.400 Yeah. So, I mean, this idea you mentioned earlier about we're, we're getting, we're like, we're,

00:14:55.300 we're, we're, we're all practicing at being sort of comedians all the time. And now you can,

00:14:59.680 we have these devices in our hands where we can create memes on the fly and we can use emojis in

00:15:05.280 certain ways that elicit humor. But I mean, what's, what's weird about it is that, as you said,

00:15:12.360 this, it kind of degrades our ability to be earnest. Um, it's also infused, not just our

00:15:17.760 relationships and how we interact with others, but it's infused other institutions where you think,

00:15:22.120 well, that, that shouldn't be funny. For example, religion, like religion has always been like the

00:15:26.220 doubt, like they've been the buzzkill, but now you even argue that religion is trying to get on the

00:15:30.700 humor game. So what's going on there? Any examples of that in particular?

00:15:33.840 Yeah. I mean, in the middle ages, you're exactly right. Early Christian scholars read the Bible

00:15:37.880 closely and realized there's no record of Jesus ever laughing. And that that therefore that's

00:15:42.800 important. You know, uh, we should be serious in this life so that we can have joy awaiting us

00:15:47.140 hereafter. Um, and that idea has really gone away, I think, because it can't compete.

00:15:51.900 You're not going to get butts in the church pews unless you've got a funny pastor giving a funny

00:15:57.120 sermon. And I, I noticed that the most on the marquees in front of churches, do you know what

00:16:02.800 I'm talking about? When I was a kid, those were Bible verses, you know, always. And now it's always

00:16:08.600 some kind of one liner or a pun, you know, come to my house after the game, God. Uh, and you realize

00:16:14.680 pastors are trading these, you know, Xeroxed and emailed lists of funny marquee ideas because they,

00:16:21.900 we have to keep up, you know, once part of society seems funny, any competitor that's not

00:16:27.200 funny seems stodgy and old fashioned by comparison. And so humor kind of spreads like a virus or an

00:16:32.420 epidemic. Is that working for, for churches? I don't know. I mean, like as a, as a parishioner,

00:16:40.320 I enjoy it when I, uh, you know, get a little chuckle from something at church, but I can't imagine

00:16:46.300 anybody ever walking by a church seeing a sign that says, um, you know, uh, our lifeguard walks

00:16:54.400 on water or something and being like, Oh boy, walking on water. That's hilarious. I got to find

00:16:59.740 out more. I'm going in there. Right. But I mean, yeah, it's, yeah. Church has become, I mean, it used

00:17:04.540 to be, you go there to be lectured basically on how to be a better person or why you're a terrible

00:17:08.400 person and why you needed to be better. But now it's like, we're here to entertain you. And that can be,

00:17:12.660 as you said, like some, some churches, some pastors or members, uh, are better at it than

00:17:18.040 others. There's some depth. There's depth. I'm sure there's a lot of eye rolling humor going on

00:17:22.920 in churches. Well, that's something you see a lot of people, when people who shouldn't be funny,

00:17:26.720 try to infuse humor into what they do. It's cringy. There was a fad for like office humor where

00:17:32.240 big corporations would have, you know, um, funny, uh, dress like Elvis days or, um, you know,

00:17:40.180 a special people, uh, patrolling, uh, patrolling the halls with, you know, groucho glasses on trying

00:17:45.320 to crack you up. And, you know, there's nothing less funny than work or God co-opting humor.

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00:20:26.700 Right. But yeah, you talked about the, like sort of the eighties, nineties, like there was like

00:20:29.680 corporate humor consultants. I mean, that's sort of going on today still, but it's like

00:20:34.380 workers themselves are infusing the workplace with humor because they've grown up in a culture where

00:20:40.200 anyone can be funny thanks to memes and things like that. So they, you know, they probably use

00:20:44.160 Slack to like tell jokes or share memes. So they don't have to hire some outside guy to tell really bad, 0.74

00:20:50.360 bad jokes.

00:20:51.640 His group was spending an incredible amount of time and expense to make this engine where instead of

00:20:56.500 reporting bugs with an email or some kind of a Slack note on Slack or whatever, you would send

00:21:01.980 a meme and the, you know, the seriousness of the meme would determine how, how bad the bug was and

00:21:07.760 how, you know, how problematic the, uh, the tech issue was. And, you know, clearly this did not have

00:21:13.460 to work this way, but this is humor has so suffused our culture now, but it's, it's not a scarce resource

00:21:18.520 anymore. You don't have to hire a speaker to come in and do a, do a routine with a rubber chicken 0.99

00:21:23.480 because now everybody knows how that works.

00:21:26.540 Right. Well, so besides religion, trying to get in on the humor game, another one that we've,

00:21:31.680 that's gone on the humor game where you think this really shouldn't be funny because it's kind

00:21:34.740 of serious what the stakes are is politics. So today we live in this world where, you know,

00:21:39.980 any political candidate, particularly presidential candidate has to make the rounds on the night

00:21:43.820 shows or make an appearance on SNL, but that wasn't always the case. When did politics in America

00:21:50.740 start getting funny? It's really shocking how recent that was. Um, the watershed moment is

00:21:58.260 probably 1988. Bill Clinton gives a just lousy meandering speech at the democratic national

00:22:04.280 convention. And everyone says his political career is over. He's toast. And his handlers managed to get

00:22:09.860 him on Carson, uh, that week, which never happened. Carson never had politicians on, but he played his

00:22:15.140 sax with the band and kind of joked with Johnny about how bad his speech had gone. I think Johnny pulled

00:22:20.580 out a big hourglass on his desk when Clinton was about to start talking and within less than a

00:22:25.440 week, he had totally turned it around and everyone realized, wow, this is the playbook now. Um, and

00:22:31.100 when, so when Clinton ran for president, he went on Donahue and Larry King. And at the time this was

00:22:35.780 considered very undignified and everybody was tisking at him, but once it worked, that became the new

00:22:42.480 climate. And today, uh, you know, today we've gotten to a point where the most entertaining

00:22:50.660 candidate might get the most votes, even if he's not the most qualified, even if he's awful. And all

00:22:56.120 the other candidates will try to be doing their cringey attempts to keep up with jokes of their

00:23:00.120 own as we saw in 2016. Right. There was a lot of, a lot of cringe moments going on. Yeah. Speaking of

00:23:04.820 politics, even like on like national, like international level, we're seeing that now. So

00:23:09.680 like, I think just a few days ago, Israel sent a meme out to any Palestine. It was like a mean 0.51

00:23:16.360 girls meme. And they're basically doing diplomacy with internet memes from a movie from the early 1.00

00:23:22.660 2000s. Um, yeah, once powerful people and organizations realize that they could put humor

00:23:30.000 to work for them at agencies and political campaigns, um, that was really ball game because

00:23:36.440 humor used to be our joke, our, our way to fight back against the man, you know, but if the CIA now

00:23:42.480 has an ironic Twitter account and if Israel sending memes to the Palestinians, they're shooting,

00:23:47.540 like what is left, you know, uh, um, we really have to be suspicious of the jokes we hear now

00:23:52.920 because they have agendas behind them. No. Yeah. I thought it was so bizarre. Just like,

00:23:57.620 this is, this is so bizarre that I'm living in this time where two countries are sending or a

00:24:02.360 country sending memes to another country. Um, so besides, I mean, what's interesting too,

00:24:07.820 about how the internet has changed humor you talk about, you, you, you play up Twitter cause

00:24:11.640 you're very active there. Um, I follow you on Twitter, um, and you're testing out stuff and putting

00:24:16.300 stuff out there, but I mean, what is it about Twitter that can, that that's conducive to humor

00:24:23.680 and, and, and particularly internet humor? Uh, it's mostly the short attention span. I mean,

00:24:29.140 they don't have the 140 character limit anymore, but when Twitter first came out, it was, it was too

00:24:33.940 limited to actually work for the things they hoped you would use it for just chilling with friends or,

00:24:40.260 um, you know, talking about serious issues. I mean, it really only worked for jokes. Humor is the

00:24:45.940 only art form that requires brevity or it fails. And so this huge kind of jokey Twitter community

00:24:52.640 formed with people just kind of essentially having a big sentence contest all day. Who can,

00:24:57.600 who can come up with the best one liner about the day's events? Uh, once we had Johnny Carson telling

00:25:03.840 four or five topical jokes a night, and now you can read a hundred or more every hour on your phone.

00:25:09.680 Um, and so the, it was very easy for me to get just swept up in that and be like, Ooh,

00:25:14.820 I want to hang out with these people. They seem fun. And of course it was awful and no one should

00:25:18.920 do that. I want to, I want to warn all your listeners, please stay away from Twitter. It

00:25:22.640 will break your brain, but it's seductive. Yeah. You highlighted several, not only yourself,

00:25:26.980 but several other, you know, internet comedians or just comedians in general. They're like, yeah,

00:25:30.580 Twitter, like it destroyed humor for me. Like, it just like, it turned, like turned making jokes

00:25:36.200 like into a job and not, not fun anymore. For some of those people that literally became a job,

00:25:40.800 you know, they got hired away to, to work on a late night staff because they were writing such,

00:25:44.500 you know, great high quality topical jokes on Twitter. But I think that's something comedians

00:25:48.800 say a lot in general, which is that once they do it for a living, once they can see all the strings

00:25:53.760 and know where all the bodies are buried, comedy has no joy in it for them anymore. And I feel like

00:25:58.800 we're starting to see that culture wide now that we are all getting as savvy, as savvy as comedy

00:26:02.960 writers about jokes. We're starting to enjoy it less and less. We just know the mechanics too well

00:26:08.600 now. We're hard to surprise. Yeah. I can't remember the last time, like I had like a giant belly laugh

00:26:13.680 where I cried because I laughed so hard. It's more like, okay, I see something that's funny and I,

00:26:18.620 my brain recognizes, oh, that's funny. And that's it. There's no LOLing going on at all.

00:26:25.000 There's a thing called the hedonic treadmill where the brain gets used to more and more

00:26:28.620 pleasurable stimuli and it needs those just to maintain a baseline. So if you don't have a hundred

00:26:33.460 jokes a minute on Twitter, you're kind of bummed, but as you get them, you take no joy in them.

00:26:38.880 You know, we, we, people used to literally slap their knee and hold their sides, you know, and now,

00:26:43.760 now it's just more like, Hmm, yes, that's funny. That's, that's about the best we can do.

00:26:48.180 Right. I'm amused. I know that's supposed to be amusing. And I would be laughing if I was a,

00:26:53.620 not living in 2018. If I was not a hollowed out shell of a man, I would be delighted now.

00:26:58.960 Right. Well, you talk about Twitter a lot. What about Instagram and YouTube? What,

00:27:03.180 how are those doing and contributing to humor or maybe taking away from humor?

00:27:08.540 They're both, you know, paths to success. Bo Burnham is now selling out Madison square garden

00:27:12.940 as a comedian when he used to just be sitting in his room at 16 years old, making YouTube videos

00:27:17.600 with an acoustic guitar. So it's a way to get an audience, which is great if you're in the business of

00:27:22.320 being funny. But again, it's just kind of an addictive, oppressive dopamine cycle for everyone

00:27:28.460 else who, uh, you know, just, we, we can't look away from these feeds, but you know, one thing they

00:27:33.540 do is they kind of give us training wheels. You know, they give us a set of templates for how to be

00:27:38.000 funny, whatever the meme of the day is, or the joke format of the day on Twitter. And it's pretty

00:27:43.260 good comedy for dummies. You know, it's, it's a good remedial class and how to at least simulate

00:27:48.040 comedy, which is one reason why we can all do it.

00:27:50.720 Right. Yeah. Well, it's sort of, it's sort of like the, you know, those old jokes from

00:27:54.400 40 years ago, you know, the priest, the rabbi, whatever walked like that. It's, we have that

00:27:58.740 now, but it's in a meme form.

00:28:00.820 Yeah. And I, and for a while it was catchphrases, you know, if you could, if you could say, yeah,

00:28:04.680 baby, like Austin powers, you could be the office kind of Twitter joke formats to do that with.

00:28:11.300 So what is the downside of having so much culture infused with humor? And we kind of highlighted a

00:28:18.140 little bit of it, you know, on a personal level, you, you're less empathetic and you,

00:28:22.200 you laugh at things you shouldn't laugh. You don't know how to console people or be genuine

00:28:25.500 or sincere with them, but what on a societal level, like what is happening to us now that

00:28:30.860 everything, including international diplomacy is supposed to be funny?

00:28:35.320 Well, yeah, there's the personal cost for all of us that we enjoy jokes left and less. And maybe,

00:28:40.020 you know, in my case, maybe even feel like it's not making me a better person,

00:28:43.260 but I think there are, could be real world effects too, with the result of people making

00:28:47.520 worse and worse decisions because we've kind of been narcotized by our, our love of jokes,

00:28:53.000 people buying an inferior product just because the ad was funnier. That could have real impact.

00:28:58.560 You know, North Korea could have launched missiles because they didn't like the interview with Seth

00:29:02.000 Rogan and James Franco. So at some point there may actually be a body count for this phenomenon,

00:29:07.160 which I kind of shudder to think about.

00:29:09.040 Well, you gave an example that was really poignant was a, there's some Greek myth

00:29:12.300 about a city that all they did was laugh and they ended up destroying themselves because of it.

00:29:17.900 Yeah. There's this ancient Greek story from Theophrastus who talks about a city called

00:29:22.360 Tyrants where everybody was addicted to laughter. They just couldn't stop and it was ruining their

00:29:28.260 city. Like they couldn't trade, they couldn't do anything. So they, they go to the Oracle and the

00:29:33.000 gods say, you know, you have to, you have to sacrifice this ball. And if you can do the whole

00:29:36.960 ceremony without laughing, your town will be cured. But a little boy sneaks into the ceremony and

00:29:42.100 sees the bull getting sacrificed and makes a, makes a pun and just cracks up the whole crowd.

00:29:47.500 And the lesson said Theophrastus is that, you know, once you, your society has an inveterate

00:29:52.300 custom, there is no remedy for it. You know, you're, you're locked in. And sure enough, that city was

00:29:58.340 invaded by the, by Argos, you know, just a few centuries later and has been ruins for thousands

00:30:04.500 of years. And that's kind of a gloomy takeaway, but I think it's, it's not possible that this is

00:30:10.280 a new kind of dystopia we could be entering. Not one where instead of a government oppressing us,

00:30:14.900 we've decided to kind of oppress ourselves just by ignoring serious things in favor of

00:30:20.900 comedy and amusement and, you know, not grappling with the real challenges we have because

00:30:26.700 there's just too many hilarious distractions on our phone.

00:30:29.960 Right. Or we, we see the problems and instead of doing something about them,

00:30:33.900 we just laugh about it.

00:30:35.020 And we say, Hey, you know, it's a, it's a coping mechanism for dark times. Sure. I got a joke

00:30:39.360 about Trump. I got a jump joke about rising sea levels, you know, but it's gotten to the point

00:30:43.420 where a joke is kind of our default first response to everything. Like I've noticed this thing on

00:30:48.040 Twitter where even when like a celebrity dies, immediately a hundred people will jump in and

00:30:52.560 start trying to make jokes about the death. Like the, uh, the guy who founded Ikea died a couple months

00:30:58.560 ago and immediately dozens of people on Twitter were like, I hope his casket came with an Allen

00:31:03.680 wrench or whatever. And, uh, you know, it's, it's not unfunny, but is that really the best

00:31:10.720 impulse when somebody dies? It seems very callous, but it's, it's like the only thing in our playbook

00:31:15.700 now. It's like the only pitch we have is to tell a joke.

00:31:18.560 Right. So the, when you talk about the dystopia, the thing that came to mind that it's our future

00:31:22.680 where everything becomes a joke is idiocracy. I don't know, for some reason, I think that's where,

00:31:26.340 that's where things are heading by, by making everything funny and entertaining.

00:31:30.920 Yeah. My, my wife says she can't even watch that movie anymore because like, 0.99

00:31:34.260 since she first saw it and enjoyed it, it's kind of started coming true. And she's very worried that

00:31:38.840 we're going to start watering our crops with Gatorade and I don't know what's next.

00:31:42.120 Right. Here's the, it could happen. Cause like you, we might start doing it ironically

00:31:45.340 and then we end up doing it and we just destroy all the crops because we were trying to be funny.

00:31:51.000 Sure. Like all the people making jokes about the Ikea guy on Twitter, if you asked them,

00:31:54.760 they'd be like, Oh no, no, no, you know, condolences to his family. But, um, but I just,

00:31:59.320 you know, thought I had this ironic persona where I joke about everything. Well, I mean,

00:32:03.300 if that's what everybody sees, that's effectively what we get.

00:32:06.000 Yeah. So I mean, well, how do you, what's the solution, right? I mean, it's, it's so embedded

00:32:10.160 and infused in our culture. Is it just like you stop using the internet, you stop watching the Delta,

00:32:16.760 you know, fly movies. Like how do you, what's, what do we do here?

00:32:20.120 I don't want everybody to die in a plane crash because they stopped watching the security of

00:32:23.960 the safety video. That would be awful, but you're right. Like that's, and that's kind of the most

00:32:27.960 difficult thing I had with the book is what am I, I've noticed this thing and I think it's a thing

00:32:32.420 and I think it needs to be talked about, but like, do I really have a recommendation? I don't want to

00:32:38.440 say I'm against comedy. I love comedy. The book is like a love letter to the comedy I like,

00:32:43.600 but I kind of think of it like one of these charities that, you know, it's not going to cure cancer,

00:32:47.840 but it's, it's raising awareness, you know? Oh yeah. Please donate to our campaign. We're

00:32:51.560 raising awareness about prostate cancer or whatever. I feel like this book cannot solve

00:32:56.260 the problem of people laughing when they shouldn't, but I would like people to be aware. I'd like to

00:33:00.740 start a conversation so that the next time somebody thinks, Hey, that ad is funny. I'm going to buy

00:33:05.160 that. Maybe they'll, a voice in their head will be like, wait, wait a second. I shouldn't buy the

00:33:09.720 product just because the ad was funny. Or maybe some other insurance company has lower rates

00:33:13.240 or I'm going to go for that guy. You know, he was hilarious with Ellen or Jon Stewart or whatever.

00:33:18.860 You know, maybe the person will think maybe just being on good Colbert is not the same as,

00:33:24.740 as being a good civil servant. Maybe having a good zinger in the debate is not the same 0.96

00:33:29.940 as mastering policy so that we kind of think, well, maybe there are parts of our lives we can keep

00:33:35.680 sincere. You know, maybe I should make time every day to get offline or go for a walk or give a

00:33:40.560 friend a sincere compliment. There are little things we can do, I think, to push back against

00:33:45.080 this rise of irony and snark everywhere to make sure it's still, it's still acceptable to be,

00:33:50.020 to be earnest and nice. I like that. So if you have that feeling, if you want to like,

00:33:54.080 if your, if your daughter gets hurt, instead of like going to that first impulse of saying something

00:33:59.180 funny, actually, actually give her a sincere, you know, counseling there.

00:34:04.260 When you see a friend, you know, don't instantly fall into the, Hey buddy, the kind of banter,

00:34:09.000 you know, why not be the kind of guy who's like, Hey, Hey, how are you doing? How are your parents?

00:34:13.900 I haven't heard from them lately. You know, why not be that guy? There's, there's plenty of the

00:34:17.080 other guy. There's, there's no shortage of quippy hot takes in our culture. 0.98

00:34:20.680 Right. Think like, what would your grandpa do? Like, how would my grandpa behave in this situation

00:34:24.780 and then do that? Maybe that's what I, that's, that's true. That's my grandpa. My grandpa was like

00:34:29.240 the most genuine, sincere guy could just be friends with anybody. And I'm like, I wish I could do that,

00:34:35.040 but I, I don't know how to do it. I had one earnest cowboy grandpa and one irony grandpa

00:34:39.820 who would always be pranking clerks. So I guess I should be, I should be like my dad's dad and not

00:34:44.640 like my mom's dad, who was always, who was always asking cashiers. Oh, I thought today was free day

00:34:49.440 just to, just to watch them be confused. Right. Be earnest cowboy grandpa. All right.

00:34:55.100 Well, Ken, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book?

00:34:58.920 I'm at Ken Jennings on Twitter. My website is, uh, Ken hyphen Jennings.com. You got to remember

00:35:04.480 the hyphen or you wind up at the website of the guy in Florida who would not sell me his URL

00:35:08.260 and the book is on sale, uh, bookstores everywhere. Online retailers like Amazon should be hard to miss.

00:35:15.180 Fantastic. Well, Ken Jennings, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:35:17.560 Well, thanks for having me.

00:35:18.760 My guest today was Ken Jennings. He is the author of the book, Planet Funny. It's available on amazon.com

00:35:23.220 and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at Ken-Jennings.com.

00:35:27.580 Also, you can follow him on Twitter where he's trying to be funny. They've been talked about

00:35:31.000 at Ken Jennings. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash planet funny,

00:35:35.640 where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:35:50.020 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:35:54.300 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you

00:35:57.220 enjoy the podcast, you've gotten something out of it. Appreciate it to take one minute to give

00:36:00.220 a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:36:03.920 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think gets something out

00:36:07.260 of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay

00:36:10.660 telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - August 13, 2018

#431： How Everything Is Funny Now, and Why That's Terrible

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