Why do we laugh when bad things happen

[Dr Unne]

One day a couple years ago someone here asked why people laugh when terrible things happen. Someone (kishi is my guess) replied with a quote from a story, or essay in story form, I'm not sure what it was from. Please repost the quote if possible.

Discuss the topic in the meantime.

[Xaven]

Because it's funny. We like to watch other people fail miserably to boost our own self confidence because it's hilarious. :kaoplain:

[rubah]

stress relief.

[black orb]

>>> Im one of those few persons that doesnt laugh when something bad happens..

[edczxcvbnm]

I think other people's misfortunes and agony are funny. I am just twisted so I don't really count.

[Neco Arc]

i laugh at minor stuff but not major... and the reason why we laugh: because we are too stupid for our own good

[Chemical]

I laugh when bad things happen because it keeps me from crying.

[Miriel]

I laugh when bad things happen because it keeps me from crying.
Bingo.

Sometimes, I laugh not because I think something is funny, but because I've honestly gone hysterical and it's either laugh or curl up into a ball and cry.

[nik0tine]

It's not so much that we laugh at bad things happening to people as it is laughing at the way the situation is portrayed. We don't laugh at misfortune unless it is portrayed in a humorous manner.

It's kind of like a comedians "delivery". Something may not be funny at all, but when it is "delivered" in the right way it can become hilarious.

[Social Moon Firesky]

If I'm in trouble, I laugh 'cos I'm nervous and don't want to cry. This usually gets me into even more trouble though, but I can't help it...

I rarely laugh at other people, unless I'm supposed to or I don't like them.

[DMKA]

"A handicapped woman died." = Not funny.
"Terri Shiavo" = LOL

[black orb]

If I'm in trouble, I laugh 'cos I'm nervous and don't want to cry.
>>> Wow, I wish I could do something like that, When Im nervous the last thing I think is about laughing..

[Zante]

I don't laugh about bad things unless they happened in a funny way.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

It was windy cold at Golden Gate Park but Mike did not notice and Jill had learned how not to be cold. But it was pleasant to relax control in the warm monkey house. Aside from its heat Jill did not like the monkey house--monkeys and apes were depressingly human. She was, she thought, finished forever with prissiness; she had grown to cherish an ascetic, almost Martian joy in all things physical. The public copulations and evacuations of these simians did not offend her; these poor penned people possessed no privacy, they were not at fault. She could watch without repugnance, her own fastidiousness untouched. No, it was that they were "Human, All Too Human"--every action, every expression, every puzzled troubled look reminded her of what she liked least about her own race.

Jill preferred the Lion House--the great males arrogant even in captivity, the placid motherliness of the big females, the lordly beauty of Bengal tigers with jungle staring out of their eyes, little leopards swift and deadly, reek of musk that air-conditioning could not purge. Mike shared her tastes; they would spend hours there or in the aviary or the reptile house or in watching seals--once he told her that, if one had to be hatched on this planet, to be a sea lion would be of greatest goodness.

When first he saw a zoo, Mike was much upset; Jill was forced to order him to wait and grok, as he had been about to free the animals. He conceded presently that most of them could not live where he proposed to turn them loose--a zoo was a nest, of a sort. He followed this with hours of withdrawal, after which he never again threatened to remove bars and glass and grills. He explained to Jill that bars were to keep people out more than to keep animals in, which he had failed to grok at first. After that Mike never missed a zoo wherever they went.

But today even the misanthropy of camels could not shake Mike's moodiness. Nor did monkeys and apes cheer him up. They stood in front of a cage containing a family of capuchins, watching them eat, sleep, court, nurse, groom, and swarm aimlessly around, while Jill tossed them peanuts.

She tossed one to a monk; before he could eat it a larger male not only stole his peanut but gave him a beating. The little fellow made no attempt to pursue his tormentor; he pounded his knucks against the floor and chattered helpless rage. Mike watched solemnly.

Suddenly the mistreated monkey rushed across the cage, picked a monkey still smaller, bowled it over and gave it a dubbing worse than the one he had suffered. The third monk crawled away, whimpering. The other monkeys paid no attention.

Mike threw back his head and laughed--and went on laughing, uncontrollably. He gasped for breath, started to tremble and sink to the floor, still laughing.

"Stop it, Mike!"

He did cease folding up but his guffaws went on. An attendant hurried over. "Lady, do you need help?"

"Can you call us a cab? Ground, air, anything--I've got to get him out of here." She added, "He's not well."

"Ambulance? Looks like he's having a fit."

"Anything!" A few minutes later she led Mike into a piloted air cab. She gave their address, then said urgently "Mike, listen to me! Quiet down!"

He became somewhat quiet but continued to chuckle, laugh aloud, chuckle again, while she wiped his eyes, all the minutes it took to get home. She got him inside, got his clothes off, made him lie down. "All right, dear. Withdraw if you need to."

"I'm all right. At last I'm all right."

"I hope so." She sighed. "You scared me, Mike."

"I'm sorry, Little Brother. I was scared, too, the first time I heard laughing."

"Mike, what happened?"

"Jill...I grok people!"

"Huh?" ("<i>????</i>")

("<i>I speak rightly</i>,<i> Little Brother</i>.<i> I grok</i>.") "I grok people now, Jill...Little Brother...precious darling...little imp with lively legs and lovely lewd lascivious lecherous licentious libido...beautiful bumps and pert posterior...soft voice and gentle hands. My baby darling."

"Why, Michael!"

"Oh, I knew the words; I simply didn't know when or why say them...nor why you wanted me to. I love you, sweetheart--I grok 'love' now, too."

"You always have. And I love you...you smooth ape. My darling."

"'Ape,' yes. Come here, she ape, put your head on my shoulder and tell me a joke."

"Just tell you a joke?"

"Well, nothing more than snuggling. Tell me a joke I've never heard and see if I laugh at the right place. I will, I'm sure of it--and I'll tell you <i>why</i> it's funny. Jill...<i>I grok people!</i>"

"But how, darling? Can you tell me? Does it need Martian? Or mind-talk?"

"No, that's the point. I grok people. I <i>am</i> people...so now I can say it in people talk. I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts...because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."

Jill looked puzzled. "Maybe I'm the one who isn't people. I don't understand."

"Ah, but you <i>are</i> people, little she ape. You grok it so automatically that you don't have to think about it. Because you grew up with people. But I didn't. I've been like a puppy raised apart from dogs--who couldn't be like his masters and had never learned how to be a dog. So I had to be taught. Brother Mahmoud taught me, Jubal taught me, lots of people taught me...and you taught me most of all. Today I got my diploma--and I laughed. That poor little monk."

"Which one, dear? I thought that big one was just mean...and the one I flipped the peanut to turned out to be just as mean. There certainly wasn't anything funny."

"Jill, Jill my darling! Too much Martian has rubbed off on you. Of course it wasn't funny; it was tragic. That's why I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I've seen and heard and read about in the time I've been with my own people--and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing."

"But--Mike dear, laughing is what you do when something is nice...not when it's horrid."

"Is it? Think back to Las Vegas--When you girls came out on stage, did people laugh?"

"Well...no."

"But you girls were the nicest part of the show. I grok now, that if they had laughed, you would have been hurt. No, they laughed when a comic tripped over his feet and fell down...or something else that is not a goodness."

"But that's not <i>all</i> people laugh at."

"Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok its fullness yet. But find me something that makes you laugh, sweetheart...a joke, anything--but something that gave you a belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness somewhere and whether you would laugh if the wrongness wasn't there." He thought. "I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people."

"Maybe." Doubtfully but earnestly Jill started digging into her memory for jokes that had struck her as irresistably funny, ones which had jerked a laugh out of her:

"--her entire bridge club." ... "Should I bow?" ... "Neither one, you idiot--<i>instead!</i>" ... "--the Chinaman objects." ... "--broke her leg." ... "--make trouble for <i>me!</i>" ... "--but it'll spoil the ride for me." ... "--and his mother-in-law fainted." ... "Stop you? I bet three to one you could do it!" ... "--something has happened to Ole." ... "--and so are you, you clumsy ox!"

She gave up on "funny" stories, pointing out that such were just fantasies, and tried to recall real instances. Practical jokes? All practical jokes supported Mike's thesis, even ones as mild as a dribble glass--and when it came to an interne's notion of a joke--internes should be kept in cages. What else? The time Elsa Mae lost her panties? It hadn't been funny to Elsa Mae. Or the--

She said grimly, "Apparently the pratt fall is the peak of all humor. It's not a pretty picture of the human race, Mike."

"Oh, but it is!"

"Huh?"

"I had thought--I had been told--that a 'funny' thing is a thing of goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing. I grok it is a bravery...and a sharing...against pain and sorrow and defeat."

"But--Mike, it is not a goodness to laugh <i>at</i> people."

"No. But I was not laughing at the little monkey. I was laughing at <i>us</i>. People. And suddenly I knew I was people and could not stop laughing." He paused. "This is hard to explain, because you have never lived as a Martian, for all that I've told you about it. On Mars there is <i>never</i> anything to laugh at. All the things that are funny to us humans either cannot happen on Mars or are not permitted to happen--sweetheart, what you call 'freedom' doesn't exist on Mars; everything is planned by the Old Ones--or the things that <i>do</i> happen on Mars which we laugh at here on Earth aren't funny because there is no wrongness about them. Death, for example."

"Death isn't funny."

"Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us--us humans--death is so sad that we <i>must</i> laugh at it. All those religions--they contradict each other on every other point but each one is filled with ways to help people be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying." He stopped and Jill could feel that he had almost gone into trance. "Jill? Is it possible that I was searching them the wrong way? Could it be that <i>every one</i> of <i>all</i> religions is true?"

[Rye]

Schadenfreue~

When people see someone upset or distressed, people can't help to feel better about their situation, as it's human nature. There's a whole song about it from Avenue Q. xD

[Resha]

Maybe we're just blind; too blind to see the tragedy behind it. ^_^ Maybe we're ignorant. Maybe we're sadistic, mean, could be masochistic although only silly-billies are, maybe we're cruel. :D

I love that excerpt. xD Which book is it from?

Edit: Stranger In A Strange Land?

[Levian]

A person I know came up to me and said "omg my dog caught on fire and started burning and died! :(!" And I know that's terrible, absolutely terrible, but I nearly burst out in laughter. I managed to hide it quite well, I believe. I think about poor children in Africa in situations like that. "There's children dying in Africa every minute, poor poor children. don't laugh. think of the children."

[Loony BoB]

Don't you guys watch Star Trek Voyager? It's all about defusing tension. There's also nervous laughter.

What I find more amusing is that I'm pretty sure people are more likely to laugh while saying "That's just not funny!" than when saying "Funny, that."

[DK]

Don't you guys watch Star Trek Voyager?

No.

[theundeadhero]

People laugh at things that are unexpected. The more unexpected, the funnier it is .

[xX.Silver.Wings.Xx]

It's called Gallow's laughter. it's a psychological barrier from deppression. (Something like that anyway....)

[Lindy]

Psychopathic tendencies, zero guilt.

Natural disasters are the height of comedy.

[Anaisa]

There is humour to be found in most situations, however tragic they are.

[Old Manus]

http://www.explosm.net/comics/view.asp?id=141

[Zeldy]

If you laugh people laugh with you. If you cry people laugh at you.

And if someone is sad i geuss its nice to see happy faces around you

[Shoden]

usually the minor stuff involving embarressment and stuff can be hillarious.

[Yamaneko]

Because we're idiots.

[Venom]

Laughing at others misfortunes make us forget abou8t our own.

[Kamiko]

It's better than having a total breakdown. Human's as a whole are just a bit self-obsessed and we tend to eventually forget the bad stuff anyway, unless it directly affects us.
Therefore, it's easier for us to laugh.

[The Jamie Star Scenario]

Because people make stuff like this: just do not click this if you are easily offended. If you like to laugh in the face of terrible destruction and perhaps like Benny Hill, watch this! Or you like to laugh at poor structural engineering, this also might be for you. (http://theglassprison.net/obey/ohmyspace/tribute.wmv)

[Lindy]

I love you.

[Kamiko]

Don't lie lindy, we know you're not capable of such emotions.

[Lindy]

I'm a human being, not a machine!

[DMKA]

Because people make stuff like this: just do not click this if you are easily offended. If you like to laugh in the face of terrible destruction and perhaps like Benny Hill, watch this! Or you like to laugh at poor structural engineering, this also might be for you. (http://theglassprison.net/obey/ohmyspace/tribute.wmv)
I love Benny Hill and wasn't offended at all...but what was funny about it?

[kikimm]

Sometimes, I laugh not because I think something is funny, but because I've honestly gone hysterical and it's either laugh or curl up into a ball and cry.

Yahtzee.

[Dr Unne]

...

*bows*

[Chemical]

Great Story Kishi.

Thank you for sharing.

I was closer than I suspected.
I'm not at all surprised.

Do you know the author of the story? anyone? was it mentioned in the original post?

Because of all the groking I suspect it may be Wilson.

I know laugh because I'm sure many people won't read the story and will miss out on it's extreme insight.

[fire_of_avalon]

It was Heinlein. We laugh at things that's aren't funny because it's unusual to us, so the only reaction we can muster is laughter. This is a hard question to answer because there are no specifics involved. Do people laugh when my grandma walked into a glass window, thinking it was a door? Hell yes, even she laughed. Mel Brooks has a quote that explains this well. Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. Why? Because we're relieved it wasn't us. And because we see people behaving in an illogical manner, and we feel like we're better than them now.

Why do we laugh at stuff that IS funny? How do you define funny anyways.

[Yuffie514]

oh, well it's either something out of comedy. maybe an outrageous act in a video-game (say - Tenchu?), or when i can embarrass my rivals. but i know i got a little smirk here and there as if something is not right...

[Resha]

Do you know the author of the story? anyone? was it mentioned in the original post?
Robert A. Heinlein, it does say. I think the book is called Strangers in a Strange Land, but meh...I'm not sure. :)

[Del Murder]

We laugh at the misfortune of others because it makes us feel better about our misfortune.

[Yamaneko]

Your own misfortune can be funnier than the misfortune of others.

[Giga Guess]

Possibly because it reassures us that we're not the only ones that are fallible.

"Oh look...Bobby did a face-plant....I guess I'm not the only one that could trip over his iwn shadow...AHAHAHAHAHAH!"

Either that or people being klutzes is just funny to general human nature.