Neapolitan

No. Where I live people don't assemble litter into beverage can robots. They just leave the trash on the ground.

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Lisnaholic

I liked the Marie/Frownland one about Correlation VS. Causation. It's a joke at the expense of people like me who are quite capable of mixing the two up.

Yes, absolutely agree that to laugh at yourself is very commendable. In fact, Arthur Koestler, who struggled (as a Jewish communist) to survive in Nazi-occupied Europe once commented that one of the remarkable features of the Nazi's was their lack of humour regarding themselves. They took themselves far too seriously in his opinion. I sometimes wonder about QAnon or the Taliban; would Koestler find them short on humour too?

I thought that was pretty good, but then I understand exactly the different ways we can use toss/tosser in English. Perhaps other people don't, which brings me to my last point:-

If we want to explore how universal humour is, this might be a better place to begin:-



I bet kids the world over could find that funny and even I can enjoy how cleverly choreographed it is.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Neapolitan

I struggled real hard with this one. 1. The guy isn't wearing a face mask, so how would you know he's the type of guy who wears a face mask alone in his car? 2. If a person wears a mask in a car, alone or not, the face mask is still performing its function filtering out noxious car exhaust fumes that might leak into his or her car especially if the window is open and there's heavy traffic. I like to see that guy in a head on collision with an 18 wheeler and see if that seat belt still performs its function. This is such a false equivalency. Maybe that is where the joke lies in the irony of a false equivalency?

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The Batlord

Please.

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Trollheart

Nobody got it because tosser doesn't mean the same over there (possibly doesn't mean anything) as it does here, so no joke. Clever, but the correlation between the wording and the picture goes over their heads. I thought it was mildly funny, but not hilarious, but that's because I know what a tosser is.
Come on, Dianne! It makes it look as if the duck has bent the bars of the gate and walked through. That's why it's funny.

So you've answered your own question there. No, comedy is NOT universal, though sometimes something is just naturally funny, like someone slipping on ice or walking into a door. Even if we want to tell ourselves oh no, we're horrible people if we laugh at that, it's our first instinct to do so.

But comedy varies not only by country but also by person. You might think something is hilarious and I would not, and vice versa. It's all subjective, so it can hardly be universal.

Quick poll: who finds this funny?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Chula Vista

What's your thoughts on Benny Hill?

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

rostasi

ba dum tsss...

The Batlord

If this can't be universal then nothing is.

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Chula Vista

Sucker punches aren't funny.
An ass getting his due? That's funny.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

Is it wrong to sucker punch a cockroach?

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