Fellow webcomic blogger Ben Gordon recently wrote a post about the different forms of humor at the Floating Lightbulb. This led to a link that itemized humor in pat little categories. I come from the point of view that humor cannot be delineated, mainly because it’s evolving year after year. (Try to find someone who genuinely thinks Much Ado About Nothing is funny AND isn’t a stuffy English major and/or professor.) So it was a small surprise that I couldn’t think of any humor that didn’t fit at least one of the types on the list. (Before you argue that “pun” isn’t on the list, I should tell you it’s right there under “conundrum.” A better argument is whether or not puns belong on a list about types of humor at all.)
One of the more interesting humor forms is something called “switching”: “a common form of switching is changing the main parts of the story, such as the setup or the punch line, and creating a new joke.” Is it something like those Seinfeld “yadda yadda yadda” jokes? Or could this be referring to Zach Weiner’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, where, oftentimes, the punchline actually changes the meaning of the drawing itself?
