Smoke Signals

On the morning of September 11, 2024, students of East Coweta High School were given a brief, eloquent memoriam speech in observance of the twenty-third anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that forever changed the United States. Following this, students were compelled to partake in a reverent moment of silence. Perfect quiet enclosed a few seconds as students and faculty alike reflected on the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Then, the silence was broken. It was not broken formally, say, by a “thank you.” No, not at all. Instead, the voice of a faculty member came over the intercom and emphatically broke the silence with the words, “What’s up, skibidi rizzlers!” Let us never forget.

Most people can agree that ending the 9/11 moment of silence with an advertisement for Homecoming t-shirts centered around “brainrot” humor is not necessarily very respectful or ethical. People care a great deal in the modern day about what kind of humor is acceptable, and with recent days seeing national tragedies brushed off as they grow distant and school massacres  spawining copycat threats thinly veiled as “jokes,” the issue is more relevant than ever. So how can we determine what makes a joke moral to tell? Are there subjects that humor should never touch? Are there situations where any subject of humor is inappropriate?

Humor is funny. It is extremely pervasive in modern society, and the rise of the internet has brought entirely new formats and syles of humor, new ways to make people laugh. On face value, this seems like a very good thing, however it seems that when in a given circumstance, humor can cause people to render heavy moral judgement upon a jokester. Morality can be tough to parse in complex situations like these. It is fuzzy and amorphous, obvious-looking from afar, yet difficult to outline up close. The study of ethics is the study of all the diverse and unique ways that you are, or could potentially be, a hypocrite. All this to say that when approaching the problem of the ethics of making a joke, one must remember to think deeply and avoid attachment to a pre-concieved moral intuition.

Philosophers and scientists have thought about the nature and characteristics of laughter and humor for centuries. Many of the Greeks—Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics—as well as the first Christian theologians viewed laughter altogether as something to be looked down upon and avoided. Laughter, they thought, only ever came out of a sense of superiority at the expense of another, and uncontrollable laughter demonstrated a lack of humility and self-discipline. While it is important to address that some jokes have a “butt,” upon whom some ridicule is cast for the laughter of the jokesters, these early thinkers seemed to have too-narrow a view. Not all humor rests upon insult or derision; consider wordplay. This means we need a new conceptualization of humor to rest our ethical analysis upon.

Many ideas have been born since the time of the ancients and the medievals, and they offer a set of claims which, when examined all together, will hopefully provide a stronger basis for a broad evaluation of what makes humor good or bad. In the 18th Century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, first proposed the idea of humor as relief. Evolving from his initial explanation, the theory posits that humor comes from the release of stored up nervous energy. For example, consider this joke:

The first part of that joke elicits a feeling of somberness and respect, and then the second part reveals an alternate meaning to the first, rendering those emotions superfluous, thereby generating laughter as a means of releasing that excess emotion. While time has shown this idea to not quite be scientific, it still holds an important principle in the foundation of comedy: the subversion of expectations. Another theory of humor that arose out of the 18th Century stated that laugher is derived from that subversion, from the exploitation of an incongruity or revelation of a previously unpercieved, obscure relationship between things. While none of these historical ideas perfectly encapsulate all humor, they help us understand it for our purposes. Modern scientists have proposed that humans became funny as an evolutionary social tool to create unity in groups. Synthesizing all these concepts allows one to arrive safely at the milquetoast conclusion that the ethics of humor are fully situational, as different people and groups will have different notions of superiority, expectations to subvert, or ideas that aren’t expected to connect, and therefore the ethical application of humor is dependent on adapting it to its audience.

That idea is nice and all, but 1) it is rather boring, and 2) it fails to actually provide a moral framework regarding telling jokes. Are we to believe that speaking of “skibidi rizzlers” and “sigmas” on 9/11 or making terroristic online threats to children are only immoral because they were done before group of people who disapprove of violence and irreverence? While sensible, that idea is utterly inadequate for what ethics is all about: practically informing behavior. It is impossible to perfectly know the mind of another with certainty, and therefore impossible to actually know what kind of jokes or comedic timing will bring them cheer or offense. Logically, then, since one cannot make a joke without having to take some risk, however small, of hurting or offending the listener, that means it is immoral—or morally dubious at best—to ever make any jokes at all. This empathetic view is rather extreme, absurd, and does not really establish an actionable principle that is at all connected to how people really interact with humor, no matter their opinion.

How, then, is an actual ethical system to be extrapolated from the nature of humor? Let’s return to Lord Shaftesbury. In his writings, he connects to wit and humor the idea of ridicule. Ridicule, he posited, was fundamental to a free and healthy society. Nothing ought to be free from being ridiculed, because then anything flawed or ridiculous would go unquestioned. Now consider a more modern idea, that might be found in the pages of Camus: everything, the human experience itself, is in some way absurd, or ridiculous. All things, no matter how seriously we feel about them, from a certain perspective, have absurdities which should earn ridicule in the form of humor. This conjoined conceptualization of funniness seems to be what is instilled largely in the culture of the internet, where diverse ideas and perspectives reign above all.  The reasoning embedded within that cultural principle has influenced the youth, who are more online than any generation before them. Their youth affords them a limited pre-conception of reverence, and the freedom of ridicule at the heart of modern joke-philosophy means that they go forth without shame or regard to create unique, interesting jokes regarding any subject, at any time. Humor of this variety serves to challenge our ideas, question what we hold dear, and promote the freedom of information and ideas. Indeed, we are in a Renaissance of wit. However, this idea of humor, too, is quite radical, and taken to its logical extreme, means that there are no jokes which ought not be made under any circumstance. This makes it ethically unserviceable for the same reason that the empathetic view of humor is, which is because it is ultimately disconnected from the real-world usage of the tool of humor. It is abstracted unto unadvisability.

As with so many issues like this, the true answer lies somewhere in the middle, tempering the edges of the extremes, while still acknowledging the ideological value of each. At the end of the day, there is one thing which makes humor what it is: laughter. That is the very essence of humor, to be funny. Much like how many people will disregard the moral reasoning of a vegan because of how delightul their steak tastes, many people care little for the actual morality of humor over whether or not a joke was funny. The quality of an edgy joke can often make the the difference when it comes to receiving the responses of “Ha! That was pretty dark!” or, “That wasn’t funny. You shouldn’t say things like that.” The morality of humor is not something in the way that the tool is used, rather it has everything to do with a jokester’s skill in using the tool. Evolutionarily, the quality of being funny is connected to an understanding of social scenarios and an effective ability to communicate. These things may make a person agreeable and pleasing to interact with, and this reflects in their humor. The same is true for someone with displeasing qualities who has a knack for making jokes only they seem to laugh at.

The Relief Theory, first outlined by Lord Shaftesbury, later advanced by the likes of Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud, stresses that humor is found in the relief of strain. A moment of humor is marked by a buildup and a release, a setup and a punchline. Humor can challenge ideas, disparage enemies, praise friends, and let people breathe a sigh of relief. When everything gets to be too much, a good laugh helps us live through it, whether or not we feel comfortable laughing at certain things. A good joke is not a joke that conforms to subjective limits and empathetic apprehension, nor is it a blatant, shameless mockery of the significant or sacred. A good joke, rather, is good because it is a highly effective use of the amoral social tool, humor. People who threaten schools on social media in search of shock or attention do not relieve the strain that their subject-matter places on the audience, even though they are ridiculing a flawed world (and still, this is not likely their intention, anyway). Breaking the 9/11 silence with brainrot does relieve the tension of the somber moment, but it was out of place, unconstructive. The only real humor the situation possessed was the incongruity of juxtaposing the two messages. After all this, a simple idea becomes clear, though perhaps in a different way than one may first conceive; they are just bad jokes.