What's so funny? Or is it?

David Burge (a.k.a Iowahawk) has presented an important rule for our consideration. Not the Clint rule; Eastwood hasn't thought anything was funny since Any Which Way You Can. I mean the rule enshrined now as Burge's Second Law:

But does this law stand up to the test?

I think we can agree that if you have to explain why something is funny, it is not, or at least is not going to be to the listener. Even if I think a joke is funny, if I have to explain it, any potential humor is going to dissipate in the heat of explanation. This can be understood with these simple formulae:

In the second example, we see that the larger the denominator (i.e., the more explanation is required), the smaller the value of the numerator (joke humor potential) will be. 

So is it funny? 

Let's look at the Babylon Bee item that sparked this attention from Ms. Makkai. Here's the link; return here to discuss.

And... it's okay. Not the Bee's best. No LOL here. There was no problem with comprehension; most of King's fans are probably not swayed by his dunderheaded political commentary, and yet he can't stop himself, the Twitter results showing none of the writer's polish and insight. It hits the mark, but is it funny? I fear this is a case of satire, and as we know: 

Satire = That Which Closes on Saturday Night

This is known as Kaufman's First Law. 

I also followed up with a look at Makkai's loooong thread tearing into the Bee's story, or actually just the headline shown; she had time to write a hundred tweets about this but not to take the two minutes (three, if she's actually a glue-sniffing parrot) to read the short piece. Based on what I saw, I think we can boil her main points down to these:

🤡 Headline long; no good 

🤡 F bombs funny; lack of F bombs less funny

🤡 K's are funny (this is known as Willy's Rejoinder, from Neil Simon's Sunshine Boys, before Simon stopped being funny -- was he hit by a van?)

Our thoughts for Thursday then are, contra Burge, sometimes explaining why something is not funny does not mean that the thing was funny. Inflating the denominator does not make the numerator larger. However, if there is still a large remainder (humor), then it was a pretty hot one. 

We can also see from this example that spending a good deal of time thrashing something for not being funny follows a wave pattern, wherein the self-satire rises to a certain height, then peters off in a dwindling return, a wave attenuation that comedians call the All right, already factor. 

And on that note, I'll bid you a happy Thursday and adieu.