Humor on the internet

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The history of humor on the Internet begins together with the Internet itself. Initially, the internet and its precursors, LANs and WANs, were used merely as another medium to disseminate jokes and other kinds of humor, in addition to the traditional ones ("word of mouth", printed media, sound recording, radio, film, and TV). [1] In lockstep with the progress of electronic communication technologies, jokers took advantage of the ARPANET, [2] e-mail, [3] Usenet newsgroups (e.g., rec.humor and alt.humor), bulletin board systems, etc, and finally the Whole World Wide Web. Gradually, new forms of humor evolved, based on the new possibilities delivered by electronic means of communication. [1] A popular form of internet humour is found in the form of 'internet memes'. Reaction videos, where amusement is expressed through a person's response to something, are another prevalent form of humor unique to the internet. [4]

Contents

Impact on humor

Internet made an impact on humor in several important ways.

Similarly to other technical innovations (from printing to TV), Internet significantly increased the speed and the extent of the propagation of humor over the world. [5] The joke is a commonly transmitted type of internet meme. It is well-known that orally-transmitted jokes and other kind of folklore undergo evolution and mutations. Internet speeds up and globalizes these processes. [6]

A FAQ of rec.humor gave the following tongue-in-cheek description how jokes propagated in the era of newsgroups: [7]

  1. Somebody makes up the joke.
  2. The joke spreads to about 50 people.
  3. Somebody posts it to rec.humor.
  4. Ten thousand people read the joke on rec.humor.
  5. Eight hundred of these people repeat the joke to somebody.
  6. Twenty of those people are clueless enough to repost the joke to rec.humor, apparently lacking either the reading skills to have seen it the first time, the basic pattern-recognition capability to identify it in its last ten repetitions, or the short-term memory to realize that it's the same joke again.
  7. Loop back to step 4, about ten times.
  8. Repeat from step 3 about every two months.

On the opposite side, unlike previous technical means, the Internet as a whole eliminates censorship and self-censorship of humor. For example, before the Internet, black comedy, such as dead baby jokes, was almost exclusively spread orally. [5]

The Internet blurred the lines between written and spoken in terms of language use and the directness of speech, between what is permitted in private and in public. Also, YouTube blurred the distinction between a spoken and recorded joke, in that the narrator is actually present. [5]

Limor and Lemish observe that internet humor is a part of the participatory culture, where the consumers of jokes may reciprocate by generating and transmitting humor, i.e., act as producers and distributors. [8]

New types of humor

New possibilities provided by electronic means of communication gave rise to new types of humor. An early example of these is humorous ASCII art. While the precursor of the ASCII art, the "typewrite art", has been known since 19th century, [9] [10] it was available to few. Whereas ASCII art, including silly one, has become ubiquitous in sig blocks in discussion boards and e-mails. One may find quite a few silly examples in the Jargon File , which also mentions subgenres of ASCII art humor: puns on the letter/character names (e.g., if read "B" as "bee" and the caret character (^) as "carrot", the one may create an ASCII art rebus for a "bee in a carrot patch") and pictures of "silly cows" . [11]

The ability to easily manipulate with images and videos combined with ease of the dissemination of them via the Internet introduced new forms of graphical humor, such as lolcats, demotivators, and funny animations.

Indicating Humor Online - Tone Indicators

A more recent way for internet users to indicate humor online is with tone indicators. [12] When added to the end of an online posting, tone indicators explicitly indicate the tone and meaning that is intended by the author. The rise of tone indicators came from the difficulty of understanding tone in written communication, especially computer-mediated communication. The stylization of tone markers comes from abbreviated XML tags, written as a forward slash (“/”) followed by an adjective abbreviation. Although tone indicators are used to indicate several different tones, there are several that are used for humorous purposes. The most common humor tone markers are: [13]

This form of humor indication has been growing in popularity, but it is still not universal. Tone indication is typically seen on certain platforms, like on Reddit and Twitter, and in neurodiverse communities. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASCII</span> American character encoding standard

ASCII, abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of technical limitations of computer systems at the time it was invented, ASCII has just 128 code points, of which only 95 are printable characters, which severely limited its scope. Modern computer systems have evolved to use Unicode, which has millions of code points, but the first 128 of these are the same as the ASCII set.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ASCII art</span> Computer art form using text characters

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters. The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font such as Courier for presentation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emoticon</span> Pictorial representation of a facial expression using punctuation marks, numbers and letters

An emoticon, short for "emotion icon", is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, mood, or reaction, without needing to describe it in detail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joke</span> Display of humor using words

A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, and ends in a punch line, whereby the humorous element of the story is revealed; this can be done using a pun or other type of word play, irony or sarcasm, logical incompatibility, hyperbole, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition:

A joke is a short humorous piece of oral literature in which the funniness culminates in the final sentence, called the punchline… In fact, the main condition is that the tension should reach its highest level at the very end. No continuation relieving the tension should be added. As for its being "oral," it is true that jokes may appear printed, but when further transferred, there is no obligation to reproduce the text verbatim, as in the case of poetry.

A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme, typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online.

The Great Renaming was a restructuring of Usenet newsgroups that took place in 1987. B News maintainer and UUNET founder Rick Adams is generally considered to be the initiator of the Renaming.

The Internet Oracle is an effort at collective humor in a pseudo-Socratic question-and-answer format.

Blonde jokes are a joke cycle based on a stereotype of a dumb blonde woman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telecommunications device for the deaf</span> Electronic text communication device

A telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) is a teleprinter, an electronic device for text communication over a telephone line, that is designed for use by persons with hearing or speech difficulties. Other names for the device include teletypewriter (TTY), textphone, and minicom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet meme</span> Concept that spreads from person to person via the Internet

An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. Inspired by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972, Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations. Characteristics of memes include their susceptibility to parody, their use of intertextuality, their propagation in a viral pattern, and their evolution over time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic media</span> Media that require electronics or electromechanical means to be accessed by the audience

Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical means for the audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media, which today are most often created digitally, but do not require electronics to be accessed by the end user in the printed form. The primary electronic media sources familiar to the general public are video recordings, audio recordings, multimedia presentations, slide presentations, CD-ROM and online content. Most new media are in the form of digital media. However, electronic media may be in either analogue electronics data or digital electronic data format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Image macro</span> Piece of digital media featuring a picture or an artwork with text superimposed

An image macro is a piece of digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, with some form of text superimposed. The text frequently appears at the top and bottom of the image. Image macros were one of the most common forms of internet memes in the 2000s, and often featured witty messages or catchphrases, although not all image macros are necessarily humorous. LOLcats, which are images of expressive cats coupled with texts, are considered to be the first notable occurrence of image macros. Advice animal image macros, also referred to as stock-character macros, are also highly associated with the image macro template.

Irony punctuation is any form of notation proposed or used to denote irony or sarcasm in text. Written text, in English and other languages, lacks a standard way to mark irony, and several forms of punctuation have been proposed to fill the gap. The oldest is the percontation point in the form of a reversed question mark, proposed by English printer Henry Denham in the 1580s for marking rhetorical questions, which can be a form of irony. Specific irony marks have also been proposed, such as in the form of an open upward arrow, used by Marcellin Jobard in the 19th century, and in a form resembling a reversed question mark, proposed by French poet Alcanter de Brahm during the 19th century.

A viral email is an email which rapidly propagates from person to person, generally in a word-of-mouth manner. It is an example of a viral phenomenon, which is used for profit in viral marketing, but can also contribute to the propagation of Internet memes like viral videos.

A Usenet personality was a particular kind of Internet celebrity, being an individual who gained a certain level of notoriety from posting on Usenet, a global network of computer users with a vast array of topics for discussion. The platform is usually anonymous, although users can get celebrity status, usually by being deemed different from other posters in some way.

There are many theories of humor which attempt to explain what humor is, what social functions it serves, and what would be considered humorous. Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of humor, there are psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider humor to be very healthy behavior; there are spiritual theories, which consider humor to be an inexplicable mystery, very much like a mystical experience. Although various classical theories of humor and laughter may be found, in contemporary academic literature, three theories of humor appear repeatedly: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory. Among current humor researchers, there is no consensus about which of these three theories of humor is most viable. Proponents of each one originally claimed their theory to be capable of explaining all cases of humor. However, they now acknowledge that although each theory generally covers its own area of focus, many instances of humor can be explained by more than one theory. Similarly, one view holds that theories have a combinative effect; Jeroen Vandaele claims that incongruity and superiority theories describe complementary mechanisms which together create humor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Usenet</span> Worldwide computer-based distributed discussion system

Usenet, USENET, or "in full", User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that have become widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.

Poe's law is an adage of internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views. The law is frequently exploited by individuals who share genuine extremist views and, when faced with overwhelming criticism, deflect by insisting they were merely being satirical.

A tone indicator or tone tag is a symbol attached to a sentence or message sent in a textual form, such as over the internet, to explicitly state the intonation or intent of the message, especially when it may be otherwise ambiguous. Tone indicators start with a '/', followed by a short series of letters, usually a shortening of another word. Examples include '/j', meaning 'joking', '/srs', meaning 'serious', or '/s', meaning 'sarcastic'.

Limor Shifman is a professor of communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her work has been in researching and developing an area of study surrounding Internet memes, a subarea of digital culture and digital media research. Since the late 2000s she has been an active contributor to the research area of memetics, a more broad area of research interested in cultural evolution of ideas. She is married to neurogeneticist Sagiv Shifman.

References

  1. 1 2 Limor Shifman, "Humor in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Continuity and Change in Internet-Based Comic Texts", International Journal of Communication, vol. 1, 2007, Quote: " A content analysis of 400 humorous texts from eight salient humorous websites shows that the Internet functions both as a ‘carrier’ of old humor types such as jokes and cartoons and as a ‘generator’ of new humor types."
  2. ↑ Eric S. Raymond, The Art of UNIX Programming, p. 44. Quote: "Software, ideas, slang, and a good deal of humor flowed over the experimental ARPANET links. Something like a shared culture began to form"
  3. ↑ Trevor J. Blank, Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World, 2009, . Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.
  4. ↑ Attardo, Salvatore (2023). Humor 2.0: How the Internet Changed Humor. Anthem Press. pp. 207–11.
  5. 1 2 3 Giselinde Kuipers, "Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke", ISBN   1501510894, 2015, pp.41, 42
  6. ↑ Limor Shifman, Mike Thelwall, "Assessing Global Diffusion with Web Memetics: The Spread and Evolution of a Popular Joke", Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Vol. 60, Issue 12, pp. 2567–2576 doi : 10.1002/asi.21185
  7. ↑ Rec.humor FAQ (retrieved March 6, 2017)
  8. ↑ Limor Shifman, Dafna Lemish, "“Mars and Venus” in Virtual Space: Post-feminist Humor and the Internet", Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28(3), 253-273. (preprint version)
  9. ↑ Stark, Joan G. (2001). "The History of ASCII (Text) Art". Archived from the original on 24 October 2009. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
  10. ↑ Robert, Paul (11 May 2005). "Typewriter Art". The Virtual Typewriter Museum. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
  11. ↑ Eric S. Raymond, The New Hacker's Dictionary, ISBN   0262680920, 1996, pp. 48, 49
  12. ↑ Christanti, Maria Febiana; Mardani, Puri Bestari; Fadhila, Khansa Ayu (2022-01-03). "Analysing The Meaning Of Tone Indicators By Neurodivergent Community in Twitter". International Journal of Social Science Research and Review. 5 (1): 5–15. doi: 10.47814/ijssrr.v5i1.118 . ISSN   2700-2497.
  13. ↑ "a guide to tone indicators". a guide to tone indicators. Retrieved 2023-09-09.
  14. ↑ Gordon, Brontë (2022-06-01). "Yay…, 😉, and #Sarcasm: Exploring How Sarcasm is Marked in Text-based CMC". University Honors Theses. doi: 10.15760/honors.1267 .
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