Am I becoming desensitized to humor or losing my sense of humor?
I’ve always had a kind of weird sense of humor, but I was looking at funny pictures on Reddit the other day and there were very few that actually would make me laugh out loud. Sure, there were ones that made me blow more air out of my nose than usual, but that isn’t laughing. I know that its a possibility that there isn’t exactly a lot of actual funny things on there, if you’re familiar with the website, but I don’t think that’s it. They are all things that I would have laughed at maybe two years ago, but not anymore.
Even when I watched television shows like the Daily Show or the Colbert report I would laugh at the funny comments that they would make, but now I just kind of watch it with a straight face.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll smile at things and I’ll enjoy them, but I’m not laughing as much as I used to. It’s kind of like how when someone watches scary movies a lot they get used to the jump-y-out-y parts and they don’t jump and scream as much as they used to.
Is it that things are not just funny to me anymore or is it that I’m always exposed to humorous things and I’m becoming desensitized?
Example: While this is still funny, this no longer is, and I used to love that comic.
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6 Answers
No, you just don’t think mainstream humor is funny. Which it isn’t. So if anything you’re better off. Find what type of humor you do enjoy and go to town. There are lots of different kinds.
You’re growing up and becoming more sophisticated. It takes more to make you laugh than it used to.
I agree that aging, which we are all doing with every minute that passes changes us. Think of the candy you liked when you were 5 years old, and what you like now. New things become so familiar that they no longer surprise you. Surprise is a great part of what makes you laugh. Remember the first jokes you thought were hilarious? You’re not that person anymore. Why did the moron take a ruler to bed? So he could see how long he slept. Or something like that.
Don’t fret. You’ll run into something or somebody that makes you laugh uncontrollably; something that you don’t expect.
I don’t know about aging. I’m pretty old, and I’m still finding things less humorous. Especially today. Even my old standby—silliness—does not seem amusing right now.
Our sense of humor evolves over the years as a result of being exposed to different types of influences. Things we thought were hilarious when we were young may grow to just seem dumb, while jokes or cartoons we didn’t understand now have new meaning. I was lucky. My parents had and loved “sophisticated” humor, though my dad, on many occasions, fell down laughing over the crudest jokes. They exposed my brother and me to the great movie and TV stars of the day—Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Nichols and May, Bob Newhart, Jackie Gleason as well as those of the past like the Marx Brothers, Hope and Crosby, oh, the list goes on and on. Later I cultivated a love for more “modern” comics like the legendary and still missed George Carlin. They also subscribed to and made me a lifetime lover of The New Yorker, which ran and still does some of the best cartoons in any magazine. Of course, like my dad, too, am known to fall down laughing at crude humor more often than I prefer to admit.
How about this? Pull my finger…
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