Getting laughs from metahumor is difficult for most people. It’s deconstructing, critiquing, or outright mocking another humor product or format, or satirizing the idea of humor itself.
If you’re a beginner, or daunted by metahumor, you can practice by making a joke about how bad you are at telling jokes. Or you can bomb telling a joke and make a self-deprecating comment in response to the bombing. Such a comment is pure metahumor, and has a high probability of getting laughs.
There’s a subset of metahumor that’s much more difficult to pull off. It’s called antihumor. It’s the tricky act of trying to get laughs by not being funny.
Antihumor works best when it’s parodying a humor format or specific humor product. That way, it uses recognizable metahumor, which helps audiences understand the joke. But the core of it is getting laughs by being bad at humor.
A great example of sustained antihumor is Tim Heidecker’s comedy special, An Evening with Tim Heidecker.
Made famous on Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, Heidecker has a long track record of pushing the bounds of humor, with a lot of metahumor and antihumor under his belt.
His special is a painful, hilarious, and fascinating effort that not a lot of comedians could pull off.
Let me know what you think of it!
TODAY’s TIP:
Add a layer of metahumor to almost everything you do.
Metahumor is read by audiences as sophisticated. Sprinkling it in whatever kind of writing or performing you do will elevate your work in the audience’s mind.
It’s a simple way to give your work a sophisticated edge.
This shit is so smart. It's like magic. I could never do this. I'm not very sophisticated or clever. I like it when there's a guy and he's a jerk and then he gets kicked in the nuts and keels over. I'm a simple God and I enjoy simple pleasures.
I’m bad at telling jokes. My ego takes a blow every time I tell a joke that doesn’t land. So lately, I’ve been choosing to listen instead of speak, and people seem to enjoy that more than they did my jokes. My ego is egone.