Imladris and everyone,
Some of you may remember, but most of you haven't been here long enough to recall the time I nearly closed Mirth for good. It was called Middle-earth Mayhem then, and was filled with the generally unfunny remarks Imladris is referring to. Sure, one person's idea of humor may be quite different from that of another, but there is a fairly obvious line between good humor and base or crude humor. Likewise, funny-odd and funny-ha-ha are usually two distinct things. The latter is clever and brings a smile or a laugh to everyone, the former is seemingly only amusing to the person who posted it.
Humor is also often a affected by several factors: age, gender, education level, and location. These four things greatly influence our ideas of what is funny. Some people like slapstick
and some like more subtle jokes
, but, again, we all are capable of seeing when something is just foolish.
Some examples of humor in the LotR that make grin every time I read them are:
Quote:
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Presently Sam appeared, trotting quickly and breathing hard; his heavy pack was hoisted high on his shoulders, and he had put on his head a tall shapeless fell bag, which he called a hat. In the gloom he looked very much like a dwarf.
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The image of Sam's flashes to my mind every time. Funny! Not a knee slapper, but funny just the same.
Quote:
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"Chestnuts, chestnuts," he hissed. "Teeth! teeth! my preciousss; but we has only six!"
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And he still manages to bite off a finger 50 years later (when he may have been all out of teeth).
Thing I personally find unfunny are topics where people are trying too hard to find something to do, as if bored. Just look at the topics with locks by their title and you will see the completely useless ones. But there are a host of others that I won't name, simply because I don't want to publically put someone in the spotlight like that. We do have a few culprits that are always opening topics that make me groan, but I'll not get into that right now.
I'm going on, so I'll wrap it up, but I will ask that people heed Imladris' plea and separate the funny from the stupid. That doesn't mean you should weigh every post against a laugh-meter to be sure it's a good one, but at least ask yourself "Is anyone going to get this but me?"
Thanks