Anti-humor

Anti-humor is a type of humor that is not directly humorous, though anti-humor jokes often become humorous due to the irony involved in telling them. Listeners are expecting something funny, and when they hear something decidedly not funny, this ridiculous irony is humorous. Reactions to these jokes are often extremely humorous. Anti-humor also encompasses various types of pranks and hoaxes.

Related Topics:
Humor - Prank - Hoax

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The most common example of anti-humor is the joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" with the answer, "To get to the other side." An example which illustrates this well is "Three blind mice walk into a bar. They are unaware of their surroundings, so it would be irresponsible to derive humour from their predicament." Another common type of anti-humor is the no soap radio joke, often used as a prank. The famously dark humorist Michael O'Donoghue wrote an anti-joke that went "A kangaroo walks into a bar and says to the bartender, 'Blood is the lipstick of wounds.' The bartender does not know how he said it or why."

Related Topics:
No soap radio - Michael O'Donoghue

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Another form of anti-joke is commonly called the Nate and Lever, joke, after the joke which exemplifies it. It involved telling an extremely long joke with an intricate back story and surreal plotline, but ending the story with a bad pun, such as "better Nate than lever," the joke style's eponym. The punchline is also often told after a horrible, grisly tragedy. Versions of jokes such as these have been noted to take up to half an hour to tell.

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Anti-humor jokes are often associated with exaggeratedly bad stand-up comedians. One legitimately successful stand-up comedian, Andy Kaufman, had his own unique brand of anti-humor, quasi-surrealist acts coupled with performance art.

Related Topics:
Stand-up comedian - Andy Kaufman - Surrealist

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Anti-humor has at times spawned traditionaly humorous jokes, such as "Why did the turkey cross the road?" "Because the chicken was on vacation."

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