"There are many kinds of laughter. You can laugh cheerfully, mirthlessly, dryly, cruelly, drunkenly, unexpectedly, and pointedly. Laughter is a noun with many possible adverbs. This raises a problem for anyone wanting to tell a joke. Because a joke, at its most basic, is something that is intended to make someone laugh. And so, given the sheer variety of laughter, it makes sense that there's an equally sheer variety of jokes."
"A lot of what we call good-natured and wholesome humor is intended to be affiliative. These are uncontroversial jokes that aim to bring people together and get everyone chuckling or smiling along. "Why couldn't the skeleton go to the ball?" I ask, and you smile, nod, and say, "Yeah, I know that one." Slaps on backs, bonhomie, and let's all pop to the pub."
Many kinds of laughter exist, ranging from cheerful and mirthless to dry, cruel, drunken, unexpected, and pointed. A joke’s basic purpose is to make someone laugh, and the variety of laughter produces an equally large variety of jokes: good-natured or mean, childish or intellectual, universal or niche, about social norms or specific people. Humor can be sorted into two broad categories: affiliative and adversarial. Affiliative humor aims to unite, using uncontroversial jokes to generate shared smiles and groans; examples include Christmas cracker jokes whose deliberate awfulness fosters group bonding through eye-rolling and mock-despair.
Read at Big Think
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