Scrolling through funny memes can be a great way to unwind after a long day. But sometimes, you come across one that makes you pause, stare a little blankly, and then let out a sigh—a good kind of sigh, of course. You know the ones—the memes that are so utterly nonsensical, so weirdly relatable, or just plain strange that they leave you with a goofy grin. There’s a popular Instagram page called Themuffreport dedicated to sharing exactly those kinds of mind-numbing memes. We’ve combed through their posts and picked out some of their funniest ones for you to enjoy. Scroll down to check them out and upvote your favorites! Peter McGraw, a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder, explores this idea in his book The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, which he wrote with journalist Joel Warner. There are several theories about what makes us laugh, but McGraw, along with Caleb Warren, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona, came up with one that covers it all: the benign violation theory. As McGraw explains, “People laugh at, they’re amused by, they judge something as funny if it is simultaneously wrong yet okay, threatening yet safe, doesn’t make sense yet makes sense.” One passage that respondents found both wrong and funny was: “Before he passed away, Keith’s father told his son to cremate his body. Then he told Keith to do whatever he wished with the remains. Keith decided to snort his dead father’s ashes.” The violation here, of course, is the snorting of the ashes. But the benign part is that Keith’s dad had said he could do whatever he wanted with the remains, making it technically okay. What someone views as benign or a violation is influenced by many factors—their beliefs, lifestyle, the number of drinks they’ve had, the context they’re in, whether they’re in a comedy club or a church, and naturally, their culture, because culture creates norms and rules. “A lot of comedy breaks rules, so it depends on what rules you value and don’t value in that way.” There are many topics that are initially too sensitive to joke about, but after a while, they become acceptable. However, if too much time passes, they might no longer be relevant or funny. The key is finding that “sweet spot” when the timing is just right. For example, in that study, his team measured people’s reactions to a parody account of Hurricane Katrina. “What we found was as Katrina was wreaking havoc on the New York metropolitan area, the jokes coming out of this parody account weren’t funny. Then, with the passage of time, they started to become funny and less offensive. And then further, months and months later, those jokes no longer seemed relevant,” McGraw recalls. “I can’t remember the exact date but it was like 39 days after Hurricane Katrina we found that those jokes peaked. Of course, in some cases, it peaks an hour later. […] And there are some tragedies in the world that may never peak because it never becomes okay to joke about.” “That’s as close as we come because there are no cultural norms, there is no language, and it all is connected to that idea of physical play,” McGraw sums up. “But as you know, not everybody finds pratfalls to be amusing, so there are real limits to the universality of comedy.” Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
