Finding a joke funny requires granting the joker equal status

the phenomenology of finding someone's joke funny is very interesting. I have paid close attention to it in myself and I find that I usually can't laugh at someone's joke without granting them a kind of equal social status / fundamental dignity getting someone's joke is humbling

the finite physicist @FinitePhysicist · Jun 22, 2023

yo what the fuck is wrong with people

Jun 22, 2023

what's trippy is that if I for whatever reason (usually some kind of status fear myself) am blocked from seeing someone as a full person, then it's easy to find their jokes kind of land flat but once or twice I've been able to WATCH myself inhibit the sense of humor

part of what it means to get someone's joke is to deeply accept their meaning-making, letting it into your own, and allowing them to play with meaning it's a kind of trust or something, I think letting one's guard down, letting someone fool you

huh!!! this would also explain why dictators become humorless and unable to laugh at anybody else's jokes! (and why sane kings keep jesters around, so that they aren't 100% on top of the status hierarchy)

Michael Smith @Morphenius · Apr 11, 2022

This is great. It reminds me of how the archetypal role of the jester is not to report the news or to entertain. He's there to shake the king loose from calcified frames. Which is to say, it's a good point even if you can find a way to argue it into oblivion.

quoting @Historycourses: Hot take: if the Aztecs were considered indigenous to Mexico at the time of Cortes' conquest, then why should we not consider Anglos indigenous to America in the year 2022?