The paradoxicality

Photo from Pexels by Craig Adderley My family and I went out to 2 malls right before my, and my sister’s birthdays rolled around. The primary intention seemed to be to get my sister and me dresses for our upcoming birthdays. My sister was excited about it. She wanted me to accompany her in her hunt for the perfect dress. She almost found one too. But neither I nor my dad thought it was worth it.…

Love Bug Cool waters A birthday date

Lollipop Cigarette Dreamy Loudly Quiet Woods Let’s monkey around?

Love Bug Cool waters A birthday date

Fortune Teller Green day Solar Energy Rustic Window to summer Lazy evening Flight and Freedom

Her reflection glitters on my waters of patience. Rising from the horizon, at first she warms me up to her coming; and just when I soak her hues into my calming being, she loses them all, as if ashamed of the soothing parts of her. Then I see her scorching everything underneath her. And I tell myself, “how dare you even let the thought of undermining her shine seep in?”. Her brazen…

Photo from Pexels by Craig Adderley My family and I went out to 2 malls right before my, and my sister’s birthdays rolled around. The primary intention seemed to be to get my sister and me dresses for our upcoming birthdays. My sister was excited about it. She wanted me to accompany her in her hunt for the perfect dress. She almost found one too. But neither I nor my dad thought it was worth it.…

Tibetan Buddhist Temple, Dehradun

Having recently shifted to India from UAE, temporarily staying in Meerut got quite difficult for us (me, my sister and my mom) to handle. Some of my loneliest moments have been here in Meerut. We planned to go to Mussoorie for a couple of days to get a break from the dread we felt at Meerut. Hills/mountains always make me happy. The air breathes different; the greenery feels enveloping; passing…

Photo by Jean-Daniel Francoeur I have always found myself to be a pretty indecisive person. It isn’t surprising given the era I’ve grown up in: the era of technology. Our generation is flushed by a multitude of options and information. Sorting through my digital space I noticed how fragmented my life (and self) with the combination of the usage of technology (particularly the Internet) has come…

Goodreads Book Review: “Everything is Fcked: A Book About Hope” by Mark Manson

Everything is Fcked: A Book About Hope by Mark MansonMy rating: 4 of 5 starsI do not relate to the very negative reviews of this book. Manson did a great job retaining his style while also trying to get to some real concepts, and convey them in a simple (yet profound) manner.Some parts did make me uncomfortable, but as someone interested in the Existential, Positive, Psychoanalytical, Analytical,…

Eye of the Storm

You always get in the way. And I always let you. I protected you with my stoic armour. I let you run amok, because to stop you, I thought would mean robbing you of your life. Oh your sordid impulses, kept stifling me, and kept my attention away from myself.  But someone came along, and looked for me. You didn’t let me be seen by their kind eyes. You kept giving me excuses, as if words could ever…

Her reflection glitters on my waters of patience. Rising from the horizon, she first she warms me up to her coming; and just when I soak her hues into my calming being,she loses them all, as if ashamed of the soothing parts of her. Then I see her scorching everything underneath her. And I tell myself, “how dare you even let the thought of undermining her shine seep in?”. Her brazen…

  Dark humour is the category of humour that is incredibly controversial. Like most kinds of humour, it is hit-or-miss. When it lands well, it manages to make a commentary on the morbid aspects of life in a digestible manner; but when it fails to make the desired impact, it leaves a bad aftertaste – reminding one of the dark realities of life, without the cathartic effect.

Lexico defines Black humour as “Comedy, satire, etc., that presents tragic, distressing, or morbid situations in humorous terms; humour that is ironic, cynical, or dry; gallows humour.”

This kind of humour deals with topics such as death, crimes, war, disability, terrorism etc.

Here are a few examples of dark jokes from the website Thought Catalog:

  Can orphans eat at a family restaurant?

  “I’m sorry” and “I apologize” mean the same thing. Except at a funeral.

—Demetri Martin

  Where did Lucy go during the bombing? Everywhere.

  So a guy is walking with a young boy into the woods.

Boy “hey mister it’s getting dark out and I’m scared”

Man “how do you think I feel, I have to walk back alone”

Most people tend to experience discomfort when they are confronted with jokes of such nature. Many may even feel offended at jokes being made on topics that are meant to be taken seriously.

In today’s era, dark humour has in some ways become both more widely used and accepted, as well as heavily frowned upon. With a rise in sensitivity and social consciousness over the usage of language, jokes deemed insensitive receive immense backlash and most comedians today prefer keeping their material as politically correct as possible.

The 21st-century youth seem to have a more nihilistic mood and that does reflect on the modern means of humour – such as memes. An example of this is the popularity of world war 3 memes after the news of the United States drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport – which targeted and killed Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani – came out in the first week of January.

Source: Asiaville

  Such a trend reveals two major things about dark humour. Firstly, it is a coping mechanism to deal with morbid subjects that can otherwise cause distress. In fact, a famous German psychologist Sigmund Freud commented on black comedy in his 1927 essay Humour (Der Humor): “The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.” Black comedy, thus, is in some ways a means to relieve oneself of the extremely dark nature of certain subjects like death, war, crimes etc.

Secondly, it assists in making social commentaries and spreading relevant information to a large section of people. It brings light to dark parts of human society in a manner that is not overwhelming for its audience. The immediate popularity of WW3 memes assisted in informing the world of the news of the death of Qasem Soleimani on the authorisation of the US President Trump.

If such theories supporting the usage of Gallows humour is not interesting enough, a study conducted in 2017 suggesting a positive correlation between high intelligence, low aggression, emotional stability and the preference for black humour (Willinger et al., 2017) is sure to pique one’s interest. The study supports the previous theories of humour comprehension and appreciation being associated with IQ but brings a special focus over the sub-category of dark humour as well as other aspects like aggression and emotional stability. It is, however, necessary to point out how correlation does not always equal causation. So learning to appreciate dark humour may or may not lead to the benefits of having lower aggression and greater emotional stability. It does, nevertheless, make a good enough case for putting an effort for gaining an appreciation for dark humour – if you don’t appreciate it already.

Seems like yet another good reason to work on our sense of humour.

  References:

Oxford dictionaries (2016) Black humour. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/de/definition/englisch_usa/black-humour.

Willinger, U., Hergovich, A., Schmoeger, M., Deckert, M., Stoettner, S., Bunda, I., … Auff, E. (2017). Cognitive and emotional demands of black humour processing: the role of intelligence, aggressiveness and mood. Cognitive Processing, 18(2), 159–167. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-016-0789-y

Stockton, C. (2018, September 29). Dark Jokes: 22 Funny (But Depressing) Jokes. Retrieved from Thought Catalog: https://thoughtcatalog.com/christine-stockton/2013/11/23-funny-but-depressing-jokes/