How to Be Funny

Getting StartedWhat Makes Something Funny?Expanding Your MaterialThe Benefits of Being FunnyPutting It All TogetherSample Jokes

Edited by Wpendy, biuealien, Versageek, Nicole Willson and 180 others

Being funny is not about mocking others or being disrespectful. It's about being genuinely humorous and encouraging people to share a laugh together. Having a good sense of humor has many benefits. It helps you see the lighter side of life, it brings happiness to everyone you meet, and it's been recognized as an important part of getting a job. A survey of 737 CEOs found that 98 percent of them favored hiring someone with a sense of humor over someone who didn't.^[1] Shrug off your stern self and tickle your funny bone with the following fun steps!

EditPart 1 of 5: Getting Started

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   Trust in your inner sense of humor. Being funny doesn't come in a "one-size-fits-all" package. What makes you funny is unique to you and the way you observe the world. Trust that you do have a funny bone; as babies we laugh from 4 months of age, and all children express humor naturally from kindergarten age, using humor to entertain themselves and others.^[2] So know that it's already in you – you just need to bring it out!
   • Find the things that make you laugh. They will probably make others laugh as well. And if they don't, you can't win them all, can you? Search for books, movies, shows, photos, stories, words, poems, people, incidents, follies, catastrophes, etc., that you've found funny. Keep a note of them.
   • Do funny things and enjoy the things that make you laugh. Read a comic strip, share jokes with the kids, give in to "silly things" just because, and laugh as often as you can. Developing a sense of humor means laughing as much as it does being able to get others to laugh.
   • Find out why things make you laugh. So you want to be funny? Well, then, you're going to have to do a little studying. When you see or hear something funny, ask yourself, "Why do I think this is funny?" Why do we think a picture of our boss dressed up as a baby is funny? What's so side-splitting about an alien smoking a cigarette in a cowboy hat? The more you dive into the reasoning, the likelier you are to be able to turn similar jokes going forward.
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   Learn a little about what makes us laugh. Laughter itself is unconscious – while it is possible for us to keep ourselves from laughing (not always successfully), it is very hard for us to produce laughter on demand, and doing so will usually seem "forced."^[3][4] Fortunately, laughter is very contagious (we're about 30 times more likely to laugh in the presence of others),^[5] and in a social context, it's easy to start laughing when others are laughing.^[6]
   • Three things make us laugh the most: a sense of superiority over someone else behaving "dumber" than us; a difference between our expectation of something and the actual result; or welcome relief from an anxiety.
   • Think about expectations vs. actual result, or its fancy definition, cognitive incongruity. We expect something because it's normal or everyday to expect it, and we're surprised when our expectation turns out to be completely wrong. This surprise is basically the reason we laugh.^[7]
     • Comedian Jackie Mason illustrates the point: "My grandfather always said, 'Don't watch your money; watch your health.' So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my grandfather."
     • This joke messes with one of our fundamental expectations: that grandparents are nice, friendly people who are utterly harmless. The joke is funny because, in it, we are presented with a grandparent who is rascally, thievish, and double-crossing.
   • Different things make different people laugh. Some people find that sensationalism causes them to laugh; others find that satire does the trick. Learn which is which, and deliver your jokes and anecdotes so that they apply to many different categories of humor and emotion at once.
     • Not everyone knows what it's like to ride in a helicopter or be a millionaire or have a baby. But most people know what it's like to go fast, fantasize about money, and love another person deeply. So make your jokes cover more ground by utilizing really basic, but profound, human emotions.

EditPart 2 of 5: What Makes Something Funny?

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   Mislead the mind. Misleading the mind is what we referred to earlier as surprise, or cognitive incongruity. This is when you create a difference between what someone expects to happen and what actually happens. Verbal jokes use this element to the greatest level possible, trying to misdirect your attention in the same that magic tricks do.^[8]
   • Basically, this technique relies on cognitive processing errors, turning assumptions upside down, and word confusion. All of this happens quickly and unconsciously, and humor becomes your brain's "graceful" way of coping with the mixed signals; if you "get" the joke, you'll be laughing.
     • For example: "What happens to liars when they die?" Answer - "They lie still." This joke works because you have to interpret the joke in two ways, and the brain is temporarily confused by its inability to draw on usual experience.^[9]
   • The aim is to keep what's coming up a total surprise, and then to totally turn around our assumptions about what's going to happen.^[10]
     • Consider Groucho Marx's clever one-liner, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read," or Rodney Dangerfield's line, "My wife met me at the door the other night in a sexy negligee. Unfortunately, she was just coming home."
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   Go to boring or unfunny places. It's good to know that the less funny a place is, the easier it becomes to add the element of humorous surprise. On the flip side, it's far harder to have the element of surprise where humor is expected — a stand-up comedy joint, for example.^[11]
   • This, again, has to do with expectation: We expect boring places to have little or no laughter in them, and we go to a comedy club in order to laugh. So it's easier to get people to laugh about an office workplace than it is to get people to laugh in a comedy club.
   • This is why The Office, the NBC show, uses an office as its setting: it's about as boring as it gets. (For goodness sake, they process paper. How boring is that?!) We're not used to looking at an office as a funny place, so when it is funny, it's especially funny.
   • Remember Christopher Guest's mockumentary Best In Show? The movie is about dog owners who compete in a dog competition. Guest shows us how all the dog owners display every emotion known to man, and how they are a microcosm of our larger society. The part that makes the movie funny is that it's about a dog competition. If you're looking for laughs, going to a dog competition is about the last place you'd look to go.
   • Serious situations are much like serious places. A lot of our humor derives from very serious events and situations in our daily lives. This famous witticism by Winston Churchill proves the point. An MP asks him during a session of parliament: "Mr. Churchill, must you fall asleep while I'm speaking?" Churchill responds, "No, it's purely voluntary."
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   Strike while the iron is hot. Good timing is really important, because if you give the brain too much time to work out a situation or joke, the funny moment will pass by. This is probably why jokes people have heard before don't work, as recognition dulls the humor because the brain is already primed by experience.^[12] React quickly and strike while the humorous moment exists.
   • One liners, or comebacks, can be good fun. Someone says something that, by itself, isn't funny. And you whip back with something that makes what they said really funny. Timing is crucial here. Your humorous statement needs to come out quickly and fully-formed.
     • For example, your friend is thinking about hair, for some reason, and he says: "Isn't it weird that we only have hair on our heads and in our pubic areas?" The friend is not really even expecting a response. You say: "Speak for yourself."
   • Funny comebacks don't always have to be laugh-out-loud, either. Witty comebacks impress the audience long after the moment has left, causing them to smile in amusement.
     • Take this exchange between famous writers William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, for example. Faulkner says about Hemingway's simple writing style: "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." Hemingway shoots back: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
   • If the timing is all wrong, don't mess with the joke. The worst you can do as a funny person is try to deliver a joke after your window of opportunity has passed. Don't worry, you'll have plenty of opportunities to crack through the silence with your whip of a wit.
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   Learn other comedy basics. We've explored the expectation v. results idea, along with unfunny places/situations and comedic timing, but there are a few comedy essentials that you should know to round out your education.
   • Witty wordplay and puns. A lot of the time, comedy comes from linguistic confusion (unintentional) or linguistic playfulness (intentional).
     • Freudian slips are linguistic errors that are believed to expose what you were really thinking rather than what you "meant" to say, and are often of a sexual nature.
     • Witty wordplay is more intentional: "A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion." Or this one, where the words "hockey" and "fight" are switched: "I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out."
   • Change someone's status. Changing a person's status, or the status of something long held to be true, can be very funny. For example, having a CEO of a company ask the receptionist for advice on how to run the company.
     • Or, as Stephen Colbert did, taking a tried and true saying such as "Be the change you want to see in the world" and telling people "[P]lease don’t do that. Some of us like it the way it is. Personally, things are going great for me right now.”^[13]
   • Know your audience. Have a reasonable idea of what those around you find funny. When you're in a group of people you don't know, for example, just listen to what subjects they're talking about and what's making them laugh. Are they the witty banter type? The slapstick, or physical comedy type? The better you know someone, the easier it will be to make them laugh.

EditPart 3 of 5: Expanding Your Material

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   Broaden your factual knowledge or joke material. It is much easier to find funny moments in material you know well – your workplace attitudes, your amazing knowledge of 17th century poetry, your familiarity with fishing trips that went wrong, etc. Whatever the material, though, it also needs to resonate with your audience, meaning that your concise ability to deconstruct a 17th century poem might not hit its mark with somebody not familiar with the piece!
   • Broaden your horizons so that you are tuned-in regardless of who you're speaking to. If you can find the humor in physics and Paris Hilton, for example, you're well on your way. Drawing an interesting parallel between two wildly different subjects can be very funny, if done well.
   • Work your smarts. In a way, being funny is simply showing that you are intelligent enough to find the humorous nuances that others miss. Comics do this routine all the time. They point out the hygienic customs of the clergy, for example, or the breeding practices of chimpanzees, relating it effortlessly back to something the average person knows and understands.
   • Be observant. While knowing a lot can increase your capacity for humor, there's no substitute for seeing a lot. In fact, many very knowledgeable people fail to see the humor in things. Look for the humor in everyday situations, and see what others don't. Often, the unnoticed humor that is standing right in front of our eyes has the most impact.
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   Learn from funny people. You can expand your reach a good deal by listening to other funny people. Whether they're professional comedians, your parents, your kids, or your boss, learning from the funny people in your life is a key step to being funny yourself. Keep a note of some of the funnier things these people say or do. And find what you admire most in these people. Even if all you do is cobble together your own funny plan based on one admired trait from each person, you'll be improving your sense of funny tremendously. Immersing yourself like this will help you develop a toolbox of techniques you can use to be funny:
   • Hang out with funny people. Their humor will rub off on you. You'll get plenty of opportunities to reel off jokes in supportive environment. If your jokes don't work on your friends, you can discard them and look for other ones that might.
   • Watch funny shows. There are many, many TV shows and movies packed with excellent comedy. The British, for example, have a very dry, witty sense of humor that concerns itself primarily with cultural matters, whereas Americans have more of a slapstick, physical humor that often involves issues of sex and race. Getting a good helping of both will help you understand different cultural attitudes towards humor.
   • Watch improvisers. All good comedians are improvisers, but comedians choose to improvise for a living and the experience can be hilarious. Attend an improv show and take part in it as much as you can – you'll laugh a lot and observe exactly how they take vague, unknown scenarios and turn them into something instantly funny.
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   Read, read, read. Get your hands on anything and everything that is funny, and consume it like your mom told you not to. Chemists become chemists by reading and practicing chemistry; sports writers become sports writers by reading and writing about sports; you're going to become a funnier person by reading and practicing jokes.
   • There are many excellent authors writing funny literature. Do a search online for lists of humorous authors, or check out the authors in the humor section in book stores.
     • Read works by people like James Thurber, P.G. Wodehouse, Stephen Fry, Kaz Cooke, Sarah Silverman, Woody Allen, Bill Bryson, Bill Watterson, Douglas Adams, etc. (Don't forget children's books by good authors; they can be a terrific source for good humor!)
   • Read joke books. It won't hurt to have a few good jokes memorized. Hopefully, reading good jokes might inspire you to start making up your own jokes and witticisms. When reading them, try to pick apart the elements that make them good jokes. Equally, try to work out why some jokes do not work. Just because you wrote it doesn't mean that it's good; it can be hard to stare at our own work objectively, so get feedback from someone who doesn't know you well (that way they won't sugarcoat the news, whatever it is).
   • Read one-liners. One liners can steal the show. Dorothy Parker was brilliant with one-liners; for example, when told that Calvin Coolidge had died, she replied: "How can they tell?"
     • You'll need quick wit and readiness for delivering good one-liners but studying other people's can inspire your own. Or think of Calvin Coolidge himself; a woman came to him and said: "Mr. Coolidge, I made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you." Coolidge replied, "You lose."

EditPart 4 of 5: The Benefits of Being Funny

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   Focus on the benefits of being funny. From a motivational point of view, as you travel along the path to becoming funnier, it is helpful to understand the extensive benefits of being a funny person. There are benefits both for the comedian and the audience:
   • Humor can energize you and leave you feeling a lot more alert. Laughing works our stomach muscles and leaves us with that light, blissed-out feeling. It can be like a "mind-break" without having to travel.
   • Humor can reduce anxiety. Using humor before an exam, test, or presentation is the ideal way to defuse tension and reduce anxiety levels. A well-timed joke, especially in the beginning, can turn an awkward situation into an opportunity for social bonding.
   • Laughter can relieve pain. Numerous studies point to the ability of laughter to relieve serious pain and illness for defined periods of time.^[14] Being funny when you visit a friend in hospital can be a breath of fresh air for them.
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   Use humor to break down barriers between people. Laughter itself is considered to be a "universal language".^[15] Steve Allen said that humor acts as a "social lubricant and humanizing agent,"^[16] giving it an important place during even the most serious of times. During both World Wars, for example, comedians and cartoonists worked to maintain morale among both troops and citizens.
   • Being funny can help people to learn. Whenever you're in a position to teach people, using humor can be a fantastic tool for easing the learning process. Relieving anxiety in a classroom or workplace so that those learning are more receptive to what is being taught is an age-old tradition that works.^[17]
   • Being funny can boost creativity. David M Ogilvy recognized this when he said: "The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible." Consider the case of Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, who was a lifelong prankster and wit, even while he was working on the Manhattan Project.
   • Being funny can make you seem a lot less scary. Have you ever experienced a moment where you've frightened a small child but you've quickly turned the situation around by telling a joke, or making fun of your scary height or appearance? This is a natural reaction when we want to make ourselves seem less frightening to others.
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   Rise up the corporate ladder with humor. Peter Ustinov made a very insightful comment that "comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." In fact, if you're recognized as being both a good worker and funny, you'll be the person others want to spend time around. Being funny at work can help build teams and relieve workplace stress. In addition, funny people tend to be creative thinkers, intent on keeping an open mind about work challenges, as well as seeking new ways to fix them.^[18]
   • Give a thought to being a funny leader. A leader who loosens up allows the team to loosen up too. If you're in a leadership or management role, set a tone that encourages good humor around the workplace and encourages fun to be a part of workplace life. Find out from your employees what their idea of fun is and start to build relationships of trust based on allowing fun into the workplace.
   • Consider creating fun ways of tackling hard problems. Taking difficult work situations and turning them into funny ones might seem frivolous, but it can be an amazing way to turn around a bad situation.
     • For example, a team suffering from low morale can be uplifted by humor, which is what happened when a Pennsylvanian bank started a "Worst Customer of the Week" award, complete with champagne prize rewarded to the employee who told the worst tale of customer behavior each week. The result was that every teller started going out of their way to serve the most difficult customers.^[19] Who would have thought?!

EditPart 5 of 5: Putting It All Together

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   Be prepared to put your own shortcomings in the spotlight. Good comedians tend to use themselves as the principal target for humor, because they know their own faults so well. On the other hand, it's a way for them to show others the warts-and-all side of their personality, instantly connecting with our own warts-and-all side.
   • George Bernard Shaw summed it up well: "When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." We all spend so much time trying to be better people, often smothering unpleasant truths about ourselves, that humor becomes a way of releasing the tension.
     
   • Don't take yourself so seriously. Remember the most embarrassing moments in your life so far, the monumental stuff-ups, the times you refused to make changes, the breakdowns in communications that you played a major part in, and maybe even the time you tried to be funny around your friends and only crickets chirped.
   • Telling other people about very embarrassing moments in your life is a great way to get them to laugh. Take a page from famous improv comic Colin Mochrie, who said: "He had the kind of face only a mother could love, if that mother was blind in one eye and had that kind of milky film over the other... but still, he was my identical twin."
   • Be able to point out things about yourself that others might be too scared to mention. For example, if you're really tall, or have bad teeth, or maybe could stand to lose a few pounds, make a joke about it. It'll give people a warm invitation to laugh at you, because you're capable of laughing at yourself.
     • If you happen to be older, deliver something like this point fun at stereotypes about old people: "People call me at 9 PM and ask, 'Did I wake you?'"
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   Be self-deprecating and humble. These traits can make you appear approachable and when you're being funny, it shows other people that you're like them, you've been through the same trials they have, and that you're a regular person. Just make sure to make light of the right things, and not come off as self-destructive or insecure, as these can be more pitiable and pathetic than funny. Deep psychological personal issues can draw attention away from the humor and towards the individual^[20]
   • Here are some great self-deprecating jokes to give you a feel for the many flavors of making fun of yourself.
     • Rodney Dangerfield made fun of both his sanity and his looks with this one: "I went to the psychiatrist, and he says 'You're crazy.' I tell him I want a second opinion. He says, 'Okay, you're ugly too!'"
     • Redd Foxx had this to say about his silly devotion to drugs and alcohol: "I feel sorry for people who don’t drink or do drugs. Because someday they’re going to be in a hospital bed, dying, and they won’t know why."
     • And, finally, one from Henry Youngman: "I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother."
   • Be an active listener (and therefore lifelong learner). Listen carefully to others, really hear them, and understand what they're about. There's nothing more humble than admitting that you can always learn to be funnier from other people. When you're busy focused on people other than yourself, you'll get a better sense of how to help others through humor. It will also enable you to observe and relate the small joys of life too – making your funny self more believable and empathetic.
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   Know when not to be funny. Steve Allen noted that anything could be dealt with humorously, including religion, death, cancer, oppression, etc., but he stressed that this doesn't make it socially appropriate to do so.^[21]
   • Getting the balance right is important when you're trying to be funny; there are times when being humorous about something solemn or tragic will fall flat and insult people. Rely on your common sense and the feedback that your least favorite member of the family is starting to glare at you with deep malice.
   • Do the "how would I feel?" test. Will Rogers once said: "Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else." Would it be so funny if you were the target of the humor? This is not mooted by the fact that all good humorists should be able to laugh at themselves – know the difference between good, healthy humor and poor taste, or hurtful insults.
   • Be especially careful about cracking jokes or pulling pranks in the following situations: workplace, funerals and weddings, places of worship (or religious events), whenever your humor could be mistaken for harassment or discrimination, or if your humor might physically harm somebody (for example, a prank).
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   Spring back. Every well-rounded, self-confident funny person knows how to take a failed funny – forgive yourself. Sometimes a joke will fall flat, or an observation that cracks you up will just make others groan. Don't be discouraged.
   • Learn from your comedic errors, and keep trying. Even the highest paid comedians don't always get a laugh, and no one expects anybody to be funny all the time. If you feel like you're temporarily off your game, don't force it!

EditSample Jokes

Wordplay Examples

Sample Brain Teasers

Self Deprecating Humor Examples

Edit Video

Using skill, practice, and timing, you can learn to tell a joke well.

Edit Tips

• Gender matters. Men tend to tell more jokes, tease and disparage (hostile humor), and enjoy slapstick humor, whereas women tend to prefer telling a story, usually in a self-deprecating manner, that elicits a response of group solidarity from other females. ^[22] Interestingly, the roles reverse when you stick men and women together – men tend to tone down the teasing while women turn it up and target it at men, losing much of their self-deprecation in the process!^[23]
• Remember to include non-verbal funny cues, such as doing a funny dance, or making a funny noise, where these are appropriate.
• Hand gestures help and can even make things funnier. Facial expressions are very important too.
• If you wait too long, even very funny comments will lose their impact. For example, if someone says something to you and you think of a witty comeback two hours later, you're probably better off just keeping it to yourself. It won't be funny anymore, and you'll look slow, and possibly daft.
• Practice callbacks. You may have noticed that many comedians will tell a joke and then bring it back in one version or another, usually getting as big a laugh (or bigger) on the second time than on the first. This is called a callback, and you can use this technique, too. If you come up with a joke or observation that gets a big laugh, subtly bring it back a little later. As a general rule, though, don't try to call something back more than 3 times.
• What is funny has cultural overlays. Something funny in the USA may be perplexing in France, for example. Keep this in mind, and try to find universally shared funny stories.
• Don't laugh at your own jokes until everyone else is laughing. It will not only make it seem you're trying too hard to be funny, but it can also spoil the funny moment and nobody else will feel inclined to laugh. Avoid "canned laughter" for individuals.
• If someone from across the room starts looking at you while a test is happening, then throw a funny face while the teacher is not looking. This should make them laugh depending on their personality.
• Keep it fresh. Staying on one subject can grow tiresome quickly; learn to flip to new topics to keep your humor fresh during an occasion of repartee!
• Practice being funny. Everything improves with practice but it's important to practice in a low-risk environment first and to build up your funnier self to wider audiences as you improve. Your family and friends will be most forgiving, while your staff will be apprehensive if you're suddenly shape-shifting into a funnier person, and a large audience will expect you to be good from the start. Practicing with people you trust and who can give you constructive feedback is a good way to start.

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Edit Warnings

• Some people will always take themselves overly seriously – while they're riper for being a source of humor than anyone else, on the whole, it pays to not over-target them. All the same, don't let their arrogance, insecurities, or stubborn attachment to solemnity bring you down. Recognize that terribly serious people can be very difficult to work and live with, and keep a good distance from them if your humor is rubbing them the wrong way.
• Be sure to consider if the enviroment where you tell the joke is appropriate before you begin.
• Be very careful with being funny about sacred cows, from religion to politics. Everything can be funny but sometimes if you go "too far" in someone else's eyes, they'll call you on it.

Edit Things You'll Need

• Humorous books, DVDs, TV channels
• Theater tickets for comedies and improvisation performances
• A humourous personality