Funny things

[jack]

It seems like I find things really funny much less often than I used to. Does everyone get that? I remember when I first read Three Men in a Boat, or Witches Abroad, I'd laugh so hard I could barely breathe. But almost nothing has that effect on me now.

Do other people get that? Is that because I'm familiar with more stuff so less things really surprise me? Or because I'm more controlled? Or a natural result of being older?

Or because there's just not that many things which are so funny, and I'm still finding them about once a decade?

Comments

[wild_irises]

For me, I rarely get that when I am alone and reading, but I still get it in company. I think that my reading habits have flattened emotionally somewhat, because I am no longer anywhere near as lonely as I was when I was a teenage reader (fifty years ago!).

[azurelunatic]

My partner-in-shenanigans and I crack each other up to the point of incoherence fairly regularly, and we're honing that against each other to better develop our tag-team entertain-others strategy. It's great fun!

[azurelunatic]

It's much more rare for me to find something that makes me laugh uncontrollably now, and for whatever reason, reading is a little more disconnected from physical expression than it used to be for me.

Another factor is changing tastes/standards; I revisit some of the stuff I thought was brilliantly funny and find that it's got racism in it that I didn't notice before, for example. And while I still appreciate how much I used to love it (in many cases, not all) I'd find the same amount of racism in something that I newly discovered (even from a time period when it was culturally acceptable) perhaps enough to put me off it entirely. Someone pointed at the archive.org collection of Abbott and Costello shows from the WWII era, and the sexism, anti-semitism, racism, and tobacco ads are all staggering. Yet it was clearly hysterically funny at the time!

[liv]

I think my experience is different from yours. I don't remember laughing hysterically much as a kid. Probably when I was really little, yes, but from about seven or so I really, really wanted to be taken seriously and be treated like a person and I thought behaving seriously would help with that. I don't remember ever laughing that much at a funny book or a comedy or whatever. Since I've got the point where I (normally) no longer have to prove that I'm a grown-up, I've got more relaxed about laughing fit to burst when I'm in company of friends and we're being silly together.