Fed II Star - January 15, 2006

STAR CHAMBER
by Freya

How to Be Funny

There are a lot of different types of comedy, but we can boil all comedy down to three basic things:

exaggeration
crossing normal boundaries
reversing expectations

Exaggeration is heavily used in parody and other forms of topical comedy. Characters in comedy are often either stereotypes or have one or two attributes or features that are exaggerated all out of proportion. Inspector Clouseau is a perfect example of this. But one of the problems with doing comedy in an online game is that it's hard for most people to laugh at themselves.

Settings and situations can also be exaggerated, especially in parody. Situations are regularly exaggerated, even in non-parody comedy - characters in sitcoms regularly act as if something that should be a minor embarrassment is a major problem.

However, while exaggeration can be a good tool, be careful not to overdo it - the joke can get old quickly.

Crossing normal boundaries is actually a broad category - if you wanted to, you could stretch it to cover the other two "basics" that I've listed. I think it's good to break things down a bit more than that, though.

One example of crossing normal boundaries is the removal of inhibitions. Characters who do and say things that we'd like to in their situation, but wouldn't because of social or other constraints, can be funny - and we tend to like them. Scott Adams uses this technique often in Dilbert.

Ethnic jokes are also an example of crossing normal boundaries - they say out loud what some people think. The danger with this is that they are generally offensive in nature and simply not allowed in Federation II. However, you can sometimes cross boundaries with respect to made-up groups. Orc jokes aren't likely to get hordes of anti-orc-defamation protestors after you. But it's still wise to exercise a degree of care.

The online newspaper parody The Onion often crosses normal boundaries with its humor. One way that it does this is simply to make up outrageous stories, like the "Pope Forgives Molested Children" story. (Which again points out the possible danger of offending people... there's almost surely some people out there offended that The Onion would even think of joking about such a topic, much less that they'd do it the way they did.)

The Onion also gives a good example of reversing expectations - reporting "news stories" that are so commonplace that they'd never be considered "news" by anyone in reality. (For example, the story "Factual Error Found on Internet".)

Many classic jokes are also founded in reversing expectations - from Henny Youngman's "Take my wife — please!" to "I was surprised as a kid when my teeth came out. I didn't know my dad could hit that hard," there's an entire sub-genre of jokes based on building an expectation on the part of your audience and then reversing it.

A lesser degree of the same principle is shown in puns and double entendres - not necessarily completely reversing expectations, but using a word or phrase that can be interpreted in different ways. While jokes themselves are a thin basis to build ongoing interactive humor on, the same sort of double meanings can be used as a basis to build on, by having characters misinterpret something they hear or see - a common device in sitcoms.

A warning on comedy:

Comedy is hard to sustain, and can quickly become repetitious without care. This is where it gets boring, very boring, and annoying, VERY annoying.

Never impose your comedy on an unwilling audience, whether it's the Sol comms or an individual player.