The Humor Code Read Online Free PDF Page A

this.”
    The benign violation theory has also been endorsed by a very different sort of humor expert: Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the multimillion-dollar silly-picture web empire that includes sites such as “I Can Has Cheezburger?” and “FAIL Blog,” with whom Pete has shared his research. “I’m a guy who makes his living off of internet humor, and McGraw’s model fits really well,” Huh told me over the phone. Lately he’s been using the model to determine which content could be the next big meme. Take a post about a church funeral getting interrupted by a parishioner’s “Stayin’ Alive” ringtone. “The benign violation theory applies to that,” said Huh: it’s clearly a violation for “Stayin’ Alive” to come on during a memorial for someone who’d just died, but it’s more benign—and therefore funnier—than if somebody purposely turned on the theme to The Walking Dead . All in all, says Huh, “He’s just a lot more right than anyone else.”
    But the theory doesn’t impress everyone. The skeptics include Victor Raskin. In the world of humor scholarship, Raskin is a titan. Among other achievements, the Purdue University linguistics professor founded the journal HUMOR , edited the influential tome The Primer of Humor Research , and helped develop the general theory of verbal humor, one of the preeminent theories of how jokes and other funny texts work. He’s also, I discovered, not one to mince words. “What McGraw has come up with is flawed and bullshit—what kind of a theory is that?” he told me in a thick Russian accent. To Raskin, the benign violation theory is at best a “very loose and vague metaphor,” not a functional formula like E=mc 2 . It doesn’t help that among the tight-knit community of humor scholars, Pete’s few years dabbling in the subject is akin to no time at all. “He is not a humor researcher,” grumbled Raskin. “He has no status.”
    Status or not, I decided to reserve judgment on Pete’s theory until I saw it in action. I wanted Pete to put his theory to the test. I asked him to accompany me to a Denver stand-up show so he could use his theory to critique the comedians.
    He offered one better. “How about I get up on stage myself?”
    â€œThat,” I replied mischievously, “would be a very good idea.”
    â€œThank you very much,” Pete says into the Squire’s microphone, once he gets it reconnected and begins his act. “Being a professor is a good job. I get to think about interesting things. Sometimes I get my mind on something non-academic. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about nicknames.”
    â€œFirst, a good nickname is mildly inappropriate,” he says. “An ex-girlfriend referred to me to her friends as ‘Pete the Professor.’ Not inappropriate, and not good. Now, if she referred to me as ‘Pete the Penetrating PhD-Packing Professor’—mildly inappropriate, and thus a good nickname.”
    But Pete trips over the words “Pete the Penetrating PhD-Packing Professor” and doesn’t get a laugh. Nor do folks chuckle at the other funny names he tries out: Terry the Dingleberry. Thomas the Vomit Comet.
    He throws out a line about “a well-endowed African American gentleman,” hoping to get some snickers, but it’s too pedestrian for a crowd used to hearing about late-term abortions and the joys of meth. He does get a few laughs when he says that most good nicknames involve alliteration and then pauses to explain the meaning of “alliteration”—although it’s possible folks were just laughing at the professor’s presumption.
    People turn away and get lost in small talk. By the time Pete gets to the end of his four-minute routine—with a zinger about a 35-year-old virgin nicknamed Clumpy