What makes dark humor funny?

[TheBryceKrispy]

What makes dark humor funny?

[indigodrawing]

The same thing that makes any other kind of humour funny. Good comic timing, insightful social commentary, subverting expectations, etc. The only real difference is the subject matter.

[DiegoPalacios]

The delivery and timing of the joke is crucial. Here is an example.

This can be of help to understand better the phenomenon of crossing the line and being funny anyway.

Crosses the Line Twice - TV Tropes

[dawgofdawgness]

Usually the dark humor ties in with deeper concepts, like current events, world issues, human nature etc. most of the popular forms of dark humor I see (on this site at least) refer to depression and anxiety in a comedic way ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[mrtoontastic]

The Absurdity of it all.

[unknown_user]

Yes, the absurdity is probably the key. Real cruelty seems not funny, but sad - at least, for the people without incline to sadism or psychopathy. But if it is going on in the some absurd way, people can't take it seriously anymore, so they laugh on it.

[fever]

For me personally, it's always been the tragedy/irony about it in the dark humor. You see, over the years I've been through a lot of tragedies and difficulties that we laugh when it happens, just like the opposite. When something happy happens I cry haha, because it's so rare these days. I'd like to think that we cope with things differently, and dark humor kinda similar to it. Because we relate to it in extreme sense.

[charliesackett]

The main ingredient of any comedy is the subversion of expectations. Dark comedy works because it goes somewhere the audience wasn't expecting, typically because it undermines social conditioning to not go there. Like death. You're not supposed to talk about death.

[jessicaherman27]

I think that if it doesn't relate to specific person.

[ble]

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