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A few people develop a compulsive urge to crack jokes
- nefitty 11y agoAt least they aren't developing a compulsive urge to crack farts...
- robbrown451 11y agoYou may want to talk to a neurologist.
- emodendroket 11y agoIs "crack" the verb usually used here? Seems tenuous.
- nefitty 11y agoI was hesitant, but pulled the finger, so to speak.
- JacobAldridge 11y agoI passed this on to a colleague whose jokes are both constant and terrible (though far from the condition described). As I said to him, I'd be worried about myself ... but thankfully my jokes are always funny. It's an interesting insight into what sparks 'humour', and how much of it is physical rather than intellectual.
- pc86 11y agoI'm sure your colleague thinks his jokes are "always funny," too.
- sydneysider 11y ago....you missed it..
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hackaflocka 11y agoSomeone I know had this for the earlier part of their life (till about 35). Mostly, it was a defense mechanism, against extreme nervousness, anxiety, and "out-of-placeness." They're much much better now. But will still let loose when extremely stressed out.
- caminante 11y agoDid your acquaintance have a stroke/cancer? I doubt your friend had "Witzelsucht." Instead, I think you're describing a socially awkward introvert performing cringeworthy feats. Awkward in the moment, but hilarious in hindsight.
- hackaflocka 11y agoYou're right. It may not have been "Witzelsucht." But it makes me wonder if there's a mild form of "Witzelsucht" that's rampant in the population making people do cringeworthy things.
- gracenotes 11y agoI make a lot of jokes and incongruous juxtapositions and things like that, I hope not anywhere close to 'disinhibition' mentioned in the paper. But it makes me wonder how much laughing at a joke is appreciation of a witty idea vs how much of it is a social contract where you say something mildly interesting, laugh, and other conversation participants laugh. It's still a genuine social exchange, but the point is that humor has empathy as a key component, and it helps us bond. If you were to convey the same concept in a tone of anger or disappointment, most listeners won't laugh. So maybe humor and rants are two sides of the same coin: socialized salience. But like any other social contract, it can be abused. If you frame a sentence in the cadence of a joke or rant, you're expecting the listener to respond. If you rant for a very long time, people stop listening. If you make jokes 24/7, the social activity of joke-telling is no longer a two-way street, and people stop laughing. If you deliver nonsense like a joke, you may get the knee-jerk social laugh, but not the witty-idea laugh (unless nonsense is the witty idea). If it's inappropriate to bond in a situation, and you tell a joke, you might not get a laugh, let alone an acknowledgment. For various reasons, patients described in the article only have pieces of this whole system, and struggle with the social aspect or the witty-idea aspect.
- mpnordland 11y agoI would say there's a definite social component. I have some ability to speak Spanish, and work with several Spanish speaking coworkers. Sometimes I completely miss the joke, but laugh anyways, because everyone else is.
- lolidaisuki 11y agoI think that Reddit is making this a lot worse, at least for the people using it. Pretty much everyone there is constantly trying to make jokes in order to get a few upvotes and as a result even the most serious subreddits have people who feel the need to crack jokes. It is really fucking annoying.
- MasterScrat 11y agoThis is why they introduced the [serious] tag, which literally prohibits jokes in the thread. This was a very welcome feature.
- harryf 11y agoThey could also add a [srsly!?!] tag for when all comments must express outrage
- MasterScrat 11y agoActually it would make more sense to have tags and filters, so you could prioritize the type of comments you want to see. I'm too young to have known it but I think slashdot had a system like that?
- marcosdumay 11y agoIt still has. It's only missing the comments for one to filter nowadays.
- emodendroket 11y agoWelcome to whom? I'd rather have the wisecracks.
- bonobo 11y agoWelcome to the people who want to participate in serious discussions. You still have threads, and whole subreddits for that matter, with jokes. But before this tag, people who wanted a joke-free discussion were unable to do so on Reddit, and had to dig through piles of puns and jokes to get some thoughtful comments. Now we have space for both groups.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- scandox 11y agoI once sat next to a businessman whose only conversation was making joke after joke during an entire dinner. They were not his own, just regular old jokes. He'd built a business worth 300 million euro over thirty years and he literally told me jokes for two and a half hours. By the end I struggled to even smile let alone laugh. He didn't appear to notice. Perhaps this explains it.
- jacquesm 11y agoI suspect he believes the jokes are good because people pay attention to him because of the $300M, not because of the jokes but it's hard for him to tell the difference from where he's sitting.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- scandox 11y agoThe funny thing is until you said this it never occurred to me for a moment. My impression was much more of someone that couldn't help themselves. More as if he was terrified of even a moment's silence.
- 72deluxe 11y agoI have the compulsive urge to crack nuts. Only when trying to eat them, mind you...
- raulk 11y agoSo finally we understand Chandler's condition (Friends).