“You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish!”

Humor is something that brings students together, because when students share the same humor, they tend to relate to each other more and find more things in common.

Why Humor Works

Humor is a great way for students to bridge gaps and build connections.

Senior Reid Campbell was able to build a friend group with seniors Benjamin Walgomuth, Nathan Patterson and Luke Perez because of their shared humor.

“In theater I, [in my] freshman year, the only person I really knew was Luke in that class,” Campbell said, “Once I started doing more assignments, I branched out, and I met both Nathan and Ben, and it mostly started off with making jokes and talking to each other. I didn’t even know [them] until I started making jokes.”

Humor is also used frequently to mend and strengthen already established friendships, and cheer up others.

As a summer camp counselor, freshman Daliya Gerson has used her humor plenty of times.

“One time, one of my campers was having a really hard time,” Gerson said. “She was crying, and I was talking about this person who had caused this issue, and I was like, ‘this person, they’re going to the dungeon.’”

Cheering up her friends is also something that junior Corrine Bennett strives to do.

“Probably [with] most of my main friend group, every time they’re feeling sad or something, I’ll try to do something funny to cheer them up,” Bennett said. “Sometimes it doesn’t work, and I’ll be like, ‘Okay, they do just need space.’ But I’ll always try to make them laugh [and] keep their happy up.”

One thing that humor has always helped with, throughout the years, has been coping.

Humor helps students communicate what they are going through in a way that eases both themselves and the person who they are telling their struggles to.

“I make a lot of jokes about stuff I’ve been through,” junior Brianna Elder-Heinenmann said. “I feel like that helps a lot. I know that I’ve accepted what I’ve gone through, and I feel like talking about it and making jokes about it can help other people accept it as well.”

Even if students are not necessarily discussing their struggles with their classmates, media and jokes found on the internet serve as a way to relieve sadness and stress.

Junior Rawly Adams enjoys watching comedy specials on Netflix from Bo Burnham because he relates to and finds Burnham’s humor funny.

“Watching comedy specials on Netflix has helped me through a lot of sad times,” Adams said.

While humor might be universal in cheering students up, it comes in many different forms. Many students find other forms of humor funnier than others.

Dad Humor

“Dad, I’m hungry!” 

“Hi hungry, I’m dad!”

A type of humor everyone is familiar with is Dad Humor, the catchy question-and-response jokes that are found online or told by their fathers.

Bennett’s humor has been influenced by her father’s dad jokes and corny humor.

“There was this one time when my whole family was out in the kitchen, and my dad just kept knocking on the fridge for like five minutes,” Bennett said. “My mom finally asked, ‘what are you doing?’ And he said, ‘There might be a salad dressing.’”

What makes jokes that follow the dad joke format so funny is how un-funny they are.

According to Marc Hye-Knudsen, a humor researcher at Aarhus University, in the article “Why dad jokes crack us up,” most dad jokes are so un-funny that they become funny again.

Witty Humor

“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. He said his summer was pretty good too.”

A relative to the dad joke is witty humor, which is more planned out and clever. While punchlines in dad jokes are easy to understand, punchlines to witty jokes often are not.

“I describe [my humor] as well thought out and not that funny,” Adams said, “I think I do humor to make myself laugh, not others, so most people don’t laugh at it.”

He enjoys watching comedy specials on Netflix and likes the routines of Bo Burnham, a comedian and songwriter most known for his 2021 album called “Inside (The songs)” from his 2021 film “Bo Burnham: Inside.”

Burnham’s work consists of pointing out the flaws in society through satirical melodies and songs. Most of these songs at a first glance are catchy, but do catch people off guard by the lyrics and painfully funny truth.

Senior Reid Campbell also enjoys telling witty jokes.

“[Often] people don’t laugh at all,” Campbell said. “They just gotta sit there and ponder.”

Campbell developed his humor through his love for theatrical arts. He finds enjoyment in participating in and watching improv and puppetry, especially the Muppets, because of the originality.

“I’ve kind of become a library of funny quips.” Campbell said.

Meta Humor

“An Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman walk into a bar. The bartender takes one look and says, ‘What is this, some kind of a joke?’”

Branching off of witty humor is meta humor, which by definition is making a joke about a joke. Meta humor subverts the expectations of normal tropes or joke formats, and garners laughter through the unexpected, much like absurd humor.

One form of meta humor is references to jokes online. In this day and age, meta humor is used a lot within friend groups, such as that of junior Andy Lopez Vargas, Elder-Heinenmann, Adams and junior Tyler Honda.

Honda makes references to memes seen on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. One of his references even helped him make a new friend.

During districts, Honda recognized someone who had the ash baby pin on their backpack. The ash baby pin originated on reddit as an AI generated image by the user “condense_mango.”

Lopez Vargas also enjoys quoting references and memes from social media with his friends, such as the Iron Man “Jarvis” memes.

“Sometimes me and my friends have jokes or things that we repeat at each other because we think it’s funny,” Lopez Vargas said. “Whenever I see them, I say the phrase, and they say it back at me, and it’s funny.”

Absurd Humor

Absurd humor can be chalked up to a random PNG of an apple named Fred. Absurd humor relies on the spontaneousness of a situation, or shock value, to garner laughter.

Absurd humor has been recently repopularized in social media, often depicted in video formats such as “subtle foreshadowing” or, most famously, vine memes.

Elder-Heinenmann enjoys absurdist humor and expressing it around her friends.

“I have specific bits that I have for each person, so it’s customizable,” Elder-Heinanmann said. “Depending on who you are, I have a different bit that I associate with you that I just do around you.”

For her, what makes her laugh most is shock value in jokes, or an unexpected punchline.

“People can have a very well crafted joke, and it’ll get a chuckle out of me, but someone could do something really stupid, and I just start wheezing,” Elder-Heinenmann said. “I find it funny and humorous that it’s so out of nowhere.”

One of Elder-Heinenmann’s friends, Bennett, also enjoys out-of-the-blue humor.

“I’ll say a joke out of nowhere, like a [well-]known joke, and because it’s so known and corny, people laugh,” Bennett said. “Or I would just do something funny to make people laugh, just as long as people stay happy and laugh.”

She enjoys cat videos, especially videos of the funny expressions cats make in unusual situations. One of her favorite videos on the internet is a cat reacting to a ring doorbells’ night vision light, and getting startled.

Observational Humor

“Why is it that teachers always pick on the one student not raising their hand?”

Observational humor, also known as relatable humor, is humor that discusses and points out the absurdity of everyday experiences people go through. It is a stark contrast to absurd humor because it does not rely on an unexpected punchline, but rather recognition of a situation at least everyone has been in.

Senior Gokul Patel finds humor through situations in his life.

“My humor is kind of corny,” Patel said. “Generally it’s more about my surroundings, so if I hate an assignment, I’d make a joke about that.”

He finds comfort through making light of his daily struggles or making jokes about what he and his friends go through as students.

“Usually when I’m struggling in a class [with] someone else, we can joke around about our struggle,” Patel said. “One of my friends and I joked around about how we had a study card due today, and I think it helped me. I knew I was slacking off, and that humor [of] seeing other people being just as stupid as me [was] really helpful.”

Lopez Vargas finds humor through observing and critiquing daily situations around campus too. However, unlike Patel who avoids banter and prefers lighter one-off jokes, Lopez Vargas enjoys friendly banter with his friends.

“I’d say it’s kind of dark and very sarcastic, and I like to make fun of people and things that I probably shouldn’t make fun of,” Lopez Vargas said. “Usually, I just try to make fun of whatever is happening.”

According to the 2023 article “It’s funny because it’s true,” what makes observational humor so effective in making people laugh is its ability to unite people. The recognition of the shared experience and the relatability brings people together.

In a nutshell

For many students, humor has helped them find themselves and form friendships that have lasted for years. Humor has acted as the stitches that hold together students’ social lives and relationships.

“Humor is important because it helps everyone find common ground,” Campbell said. “If you make a joke and someone laughs, you know they relate to you or the joke in some way.”

For others, humor has been a break for students to turn to when life gets tough.

“Life can be pretty sad sometimes,” Patel said. “You can have a lot of work, and things can get busy and it can just feel really hopeless sometimes. But humor is just our way of coping through it all.”