Anti-humor

Not to be confused with Deadpan humor.

Anti-humor is a type of alternative humor that is based on the surprise factor of absence of an expected joke or of a punch line in a narration that is set up as a joke. This kind of anticlimax is similar to that of the shaggy dog story. In fact, some researchers see the "shaggy dog story" as a type of anti-joke. Anti-humor is described as a form of irony or reversal of expectations that may provoke an emotion opposite to humor, such as fear, pain, embarrassment, disgust, awkwardness, or discomfort.

Examples

The yarn, also called a shaggy dog story, is a type of anti-humor that involves telling an extremely long joke with an intricate (and sometimes grisly) back story and surreal or repetitive plotline, before ending the story with either a weak spoonerism, or abruptly stopping with no real punchline at all, or no soap radio.

The obvious punchline involves narratives that are structured like a traditional joke including a set-up and punchline, but whose punchline is the most obvious to the narrative. Some examples of this would be the Why did the chicken cross the road? and the "What did the farmer say/do" set of jokes, which include various situations where the joke teller asks the listener what the farmer did in any given situation:

A: What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?

B: I don't know, what did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?

A: "Where's my tractor?"

𝗔𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘅 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆 An old Russian joke on the Internet:The family buys a refrigerator, puts a kilogram of potatoes there, and the next day there are two kilograms of potatoes, they immediately realize that it is magical, put money there and pull out twice the amount. The family got rich and moved to another country by plane. The stewardess comes out and says that they are overloaded and need to throw out the cargo, they are going to throw out the refrigerator, but the family opposes this. But this is nonsense, not a story, listen to another story: a boy and a girl live on a deserted island, they are the only survivors of a shipwreck, fell in love with each other, grew up, they wanted to find out if there are people off the island, see the world, built a raft and sail on it, the guy decided to make his beloved a gift, he dives under the water for a pearl, looks at one and throws it away, does not like it, wants to give the best pearl, finds what he needs, gets out of the water on a raft, and there is blood all around and the refrigerator on the raft is covered in blood.

In stand-up comedy

Alternative comedy, among its other aspects, parodies the traditional idea of the joke as a form of humor. Anti-humor jokes are also often associated with deliberately bad stand-up comedians. Stand-up comedian Andy Kaufman had his own unique brand of anti-humor, quasi-surrealist acts coupled with performance art; one of his best-known manifestations of this was his act as the fictional persona of Tony Clifton, an untalented lounge lizard entertainer. Norm Macdonald was another comedian sometimes associated with performing anti-humor, although he objected to the characterization.

See also

• Anti-art – Art rejecting prior definitions of art
• Dada – Avant-garde art movement in the early 20th century
• Dad joke – Type of short joke
• Meta-joke – Humor that alludes to itself
• Nonsense verse – Form of nonsense literature
• Surreal humour – Form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning
• The Aristocrats – Offensive joke about a performance act
• Koan – Story, dialogue, question, or statement used in Zen practice
• No soap radio – Joke phrase
• Non sequitur – Conversational literary device