Albarracin Week 6- History of Humor

 The complicated consciousness of the human mind has developed or more accurately, adapted over the long period of time mankind has been around for.  Beliefs, instincts, morals, and even humor are constantly changing and adapting based off of environmental changes.  Humor is one of the greatest experiences that nearly all humans can experience often.  Humor is so much more than a good laugh, it represents our morals and illustrates current events and effects of past events. With each generation of humans, comes a new generation of humor, thus humor also represents change, change in human behaviour and social norms, changes in perspective, and even changes in morality. 

Humans have progressed, although some would say regressed, with their style of humor for thousands of years.  Each generation picks up a new take on humor and drops off older styles of humor.  From the birthplace of comedy in Ancient Rome, to medieval jesters, to Shakespearean satirical plays, and stand up starting in the 19 century, humor has stuck with the human race through thick and thin.  Humor had an even bigger shift when the age of film and advanced communicative technology began to unfold.  Stand up shows could be heard over the radio, obscene physical comedy could be viewed via film, humor had never been so accessible before in history.

Around the 30’s to the late 80’s, comedy took a shift from being satirical and fictional, to making light of real world situations and experiences.  This shift used troubling life stories and everyday human challenges as a way to make humor more relatable and thus more wide spread.  This technique is used to this day.  Even with this new technique being used, the type of humor being shared was also changing.  Humans adapt to what is socially acceptable and what is crude.  Some comedians used this to their advantage, often making light of what society views as crude to activate latent human desire to laugh at dark subjects.  

Millennials experienced the raw power of the internet and the effects it had over experiencing humor.  So much information and material were at their fingertips, it was up to the user to decide what material to access.  Using modern technology, programs, applications, and websites all dedicated to humor were created.  Millennials were the pioneers of modern internet humor.  Using this new platform, the newest generation would create a style of humor of their own.  Gen Z seems to have the most confusing tule of humor.  So many opinions, so many different backgrounds, so many different styles are all pushed into all kinds of forums, websites, and social media pages as possible.  Crude and ironic humor is the staple of Gen Z’s humor.  Example, memes.  Brief history lesson, memes were originally short little comics in magazines, made to give a small laugh.  Now, it’s one of the biggest sources of humor on the internet, arguably the world. With so much access to the world around them, it is difficult to know what the new movement of humor will be, what trends will change the landscape once more.. 

 

First Meme

 

Meme in the early 2000’s

Memes now