Plato elaborates on “the malice of amusement” in his Philebus dialogue, one of the first articulations of the so-called “superiority theory” of humor, which is later elaborated by Aristotle. According to this model, we laugh only to laugh at. It Is for this reason that Aristotle prescribes lower-class characters for…

The humor in Dikachu’s comment is multileveled, initially involving wordplay (paranomasia), the comedic effect of which is then subsequently heightened by its engagement with taboo subject matter.

You honor me, my dear Chip.

The theoretical model of humor that best explains why Regular Potato Chip’s comment is funny is the “incongruity model,” perhaps most neatly summed up by noted humorist Immanuel Kant, who wrote that “a lively convulsive laugh” can only be elicited by “something absurd [and] the sudden transformation of a strained…

The prolonged nature of Mr. Chester Hanks's performance piece (extended over a period of months across a variety of genres and platforms) requires a bit of analytical unpacking. First, let us review Mr. C. Hanks's discussion of his own clearly satirical use of offensive racist language:

IGotSuped’s comment is humorous for two, seemingly disparate reasons:

hyperbolic paranoid's comment is humorous because its allusion to Tod Browning's Freaks evokes that movie's persistent unsettling of the relationship between "normal" and "other," thereby creating a frisson of nervous energy as it relates to the fate of YourNeighborhoodChemist, whom the community of "freaks" (i.e. the…

The humor of Werdup’s comment is unusually complex, particularly by contrast with the admirable brevity of the witticism itself.

The humor in Bizarro Sacrelicious's comment may generally be defined as punning, or paranomasia. Mr. Sacrelicious's usage is a particular subset of pun, termed asteismus (deriving from the Greek ἀστεῖος, meaning "of the city," hence urbane or sophisticated in wit). An asteismus responds to a previous utterance, using…

The humor in Danson With Myself's comment lies in paranomasia, or the homophonic, but ultimately incongruous, relationship between the past tense of the verb "to carry" and the name of a novel by Stephen King, the author whose work is the subject of the article.

The humor in the above comment is two-fold: