so, today i've been thinking a lot, given that i'm sick (walking pneumonia), and i'm just too fatigued to do anything of real value but not sick enough that my mental faculties have shut down. and i'm not really complaining about that. having a lot of time set aside just to focus on nothing in particular, reflect on things that matter (and maybe some things that don't) is healthy. i don't have any studies on hand to back that up, so preemptively i'll specify that thinking is healthy *for me*. i am in a much better state of mind when i can stop forcing myself to focus on what content i could be creating (to the detriment of actually creating any) and just.... not focus on anything, really.
now, i am a person who is best described as having put all my points in wisdom and none in intelligence. and this is a dichotomy that often surprises people, who will see me literally walk into walls that i'm looking straight fucking at and then proceed to spout a very accurate character assessment of them based on a few things they said to me right before it. i am also pretty well known as being someone who is almost always playing a bit, and when you're someone whose entire vibe is based in irony nobody really expects you to be able to take any situation seriously. not unfounded, it took me years AFTER surviving the irony poisoning of the 2010's before i learned to be able to do that, in a little known but common practice called, "growing up and not being a teenager anymore". which, now that i think about it, given how many people i meet these days who are also as incapable of taking things seriously as i was as a teen, maybe it ain't so common after all.
so even if i'm not.... exactly.... a person a lot of people know, for better or for worse, this is still something i get asked often. "how are you so wise", and on the same note, "how are you so consistently funny"? and these are questions that sound unrelated to the people who ask me them, but they are one and the same. i made a joke post a long time ago (i don't give enough shits to go and find it) where i parodied one of these interactions by asserting the answer is "childhood trauma", with my description of such being intentionally exaggerated for the comedic effect of implying i want to scare the shit out of someone who, for all intents and purposes, probably wants to know Trade Secrets about Being Funny and Charming, so to speak, because everyone wants to seem that way. (i mean, i've been victim to some pretty horrific acts of violence by my guardians, but thankfully byleth is the one who remembers all that, not me, so it's his problem and not mine).
and it's not.... necessarily inaccurate? there is a correlation, but it's not causation. important distinction that can't easily be made in a short, quippy tumblr post. because when the goal is to be funny AND convey a message, one of those purposes will inevitably eclipse the other. and that's not a bad thing at all, despite what the "anti-woke" brigade might tell you. i would say, in fact, it's the crux of all comedy. GOOD comedy. and now i'm going to get into what it was i was actually thinking about.
you don't have to know me well to know that my greatest passion in life (when i can think to make time for something other than vocaloid) is comedy. if you've spoken to me, willingly or not, any time i'm not on the clock, (and maybe even if i was, and i happened to be comically weeded and needed SOME way to destress enough to do my job for you), you have been, willingly or not, subjected to a Classic Charlie Bit TM. because that's just how i choose to express myself in most scenarios. if there is anything escaping the fear of being sincere taught me, it's that there's no human interaction more sincere than doing something absolutely fucking silly and stupid just to share a laugh. it's not without its issues, i make jokes both to show i'm comfortable in a situation and to show i'm very much *not*, and even people who know me well can struggle to tell the difference between the two, and i still struggle with being open about my feelings when they're negative instead of dressing them in three layers of incomprehensible cartoon silliness. point is, it is etched into my very nature to want to entertain as a show of human connection.
and so, the best way to do that is to be good at it. and the best way to be good at it is to figure out *how* people get good at it. what makes people laugh is subjective, but comedy itself is a predictable science, in the same way that you can find a story enjoyable but understand that it fucking sucks technically-- hi, homestuck! it's very easy to understand the idea that humour is created as a result of subverted expectations. anyone can subvert an expectation. if anything, it's harder to uphold them. with that in mind, being funny should be fucking easy. how can people ever be unfunny when the formula for being funny is so simple fucking it up is usually HOW you do it?
because in a vacuum, yes, it is as simple as subverting the audience's expectations. shock comedy is a genre that exists after all-- but it's largely a terrible one. and why is that?
now, back to those two questions. "how are you so wise" and "how are you so funny" are the same damn question. because humour in its base state is just the subversion of expectations, but to do so in a manner that is actually quality requires being an openminded person. i don't even mean you have to be "woke" (i hate using that word but it best conveys what i mean) to be funny, even if the stale, unempathetic mindset required to be an unfunny comedian also happens to be a required part of the conservative philosophy there are plenty of leftists who are also incapable of the barest observation of the world around them and are slogs to listen to as a result. i'm gonna be honest, that's most popular tumblr posts. most tumblr posts period, even. no one on this site goes outside and in a lot of ways, that includes me.
it's because of this unwillingness to be openminded that means almost all conservative comedy is inherently poor quality, because most of their material seems to start and end at saying something offkilter and shocking (actually a lot of it is fairly tame and as a result tends to need to prop itself up as being edgy and counterculture while reinforcing fascist ideals in a way that can't even justify its existence with being technically well-made, e.g. mr. birchum like a homoerotically misogynist peacock). because all you need to make A Comedy is to subvert expectations, and in the mind of an obstinate conservative, they are both the silent majority and the vocal minority. EVERYTHING YOU KNOW AND LOVE? PRONOUNS. to a conservative, they are both a sane, normal person, surrounded by mostly normal people, but constantly under attack by.... people who are different from them! and they NEED to fight back against this TYRANNY. and because they are "victimized" (by people who are different from them, existing) for being "normal" and "sane", all they need to do to subvert expectations is.... say something bigoted. to them, comedy becomes not a way of connecting with other people, but a flashy display of their refusal to do so.
this is a weighted issue politically, but not one i would call partisan. IF I SEE ANOTHER FUCKING TUMBLR FUNNYPOST ABOUT CAPITALISM WRITTEN BY AN AMERICAN WHO'S NEVER HAD THEIR OWN BANK ACCOUNT LET ALONE A JOB I AM GOING TO RIP MY SHIRT OFF AND ANIMORPH INTO A WEREWOLF. AND BROTHER? YOU BEST BELIEVE I'LL BE A SEXY ONE. AWOO, MOTHERFUCKER.
the use of observation when it comes to assessing people, real or imagined, should be obvious. you can't really understand a person without interacting with them, despite what my mother would tell you. she's a bitch, disregard her please. but really, the easiest way to come to understand other people is to come to an understanding of yourself. how can you be understanding of people who are different from you if you don't even know what makes you the way you are?
a common trait in conservatives (and yes, those annoying ass leftists who think being on the objectively correct side politically is all they need for a personality) is, indeed, a refusal to self-reflect and figure out for themselves WHY they feel the way they do, about women or minorities or whatever else. it's easy for those of us with consciences to understand people who defend ICE-- either their hearts are full of hatred and they just want to be on what they believe is the "winning" side politically, their hearts are full of hatred and they believe people being detained and fucking tortured and murdered is somehow keeping *them* safe (but they haven't thought critically about the things the government says about the people they're doing that to beyond that), or their hearts are full of hatred and that's the end of the sentence. and here inlies that issue-- they don't want to think about why they have so easily decided that a group of people are somehow fundamentally not entitled to human rights.
no one wants to think of themselves as capable of harm. it's an uncomfortable thought and an even more painful reality to come to terms with-- the idea that you HAVE (not could, HAVE) caused harm to someone, somewhere. and i specify that it is a guarantee that everyone has done so because the nature of humanity is such that no one is aware of everything, and everyone will eventually unwittingly hurt someone (if not purposely). everyone has done so. and in order to become capable of self reflection, you must come to terms with it.
once you do, you start to notice it everywhere. people who absolutely refuse to accept that same ideal you just did, and you're fine, so really how bad could it have been? the eschewing of the harmful ideals forced upon you by abusive parents and friends and lovers and even a bear is, in my personal experience, the hardest part of being an abuse victim of any kind. but it is one that instills upon you a knack and a curiosity for understanding how people work. i say a lot that learning latin is the thing that radicalized me, and even if i'm exaggerating a bit, that sentiment is still true. nothing can open your mind to other perspectives like reading shit written by people 2000 fucking years ago, thinking about the things they cared about, the things they dreamed about, the poor justifications they made to rationalize to themselves the horrible shit they did such as enslaving people and realizing humans as a whole have not changed at all. and i prefer to focus on the ways that's a positive, but that doesn't mean i think it healthy to ignore the ways it's a negative.
so, in other words, the ability to understand yourself is a necessary part of understanding other people. "how are you so wise"? because i've done the work of reflecting on myself, on my capacity for harm but no more that than my capacity for something better, and i can guess where in that cycle someone else might be. the secret to being charismatic and likeable is not to make *yourself* seem like the most interesting person in the room, but the person you're talking to. everyone wants to feel like someone is paying attention to them, after all. and how best do you make someone feel like someone is paying attention to them other than.... paying attention to them?
now, back to what i said about good comedy. good comedy comes from not just from openmindedness but *observation and understanding*. you know how they say in art class not to eat the paint i mean, to break the fundamentals you have to first learn them? i think that's true of comedy, too. in order to create the absurd, you must first find what's absurd about the mundane. this is how observational comedy typically fares a lot better than shock comedy-- it's always a lot more entertaining hearing a guy satirize something we can relate to than something with no relation to anything at all. the worst observational comedy embodies this-- when a joke is being made about a topic the speaker has no actual experience with. see again for why 90% of all tumblr posts are unfunny.
and once you are capable of doing that, you end up with a pretty large library of topics to joke about. and once you practice improv enough, you become capable of doing this shit on the fly. it's because of that that it is genuinely easier for me to make a joke about a happening than to state it plainly. and so, understanding that as my strength, it is something i utilize on purpose. like i said previously, when comedy is used to convey a message, at some point one of those is going to eclipse the other. and really, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you know how to use it.
so to conclude-- why am i so funny? because i read plato. bitch.
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