I’m not surprised to read that female comedians are up in arms over a wacky study that had the cheek to make the audacious claim that men are funnier than women!
It seems that researchers from Aberystwyth University and the University of North Carolina had conducted a meta analysis of 28 studies supposedly involving 5,000 people in order to ascertain how funny they are.
Many of the studies asked the subjects to write funny captions for an image, which were then rated by judges who did not know the caption author’s gender.
Just from that, they found that 63 percent of men were supposedly funnier than the average woman.
And on that basis, they arrived at the conclusion that was so absurd, ridiculous and laughable! Then again, study author Dr Gil Greengross had quickly come out to say that not every single man is funnier than every single woman.
But then he still maintained that according to science, the results showed men are generally considered funnier.
All I can say is, Greengross is a funny guy!
Anyway, the reasons he suggested for the disparity were societal and evolutionary.
“It is possible that the view that women are less funny is so pervasive that societal forces discourage girls and women from developing and expressing their humor, making a woman less likely to be perceived as funny”, Grengross tried to explain.
“On the other hand, the evidence does suggest that humor plays a major role in mating, with a strong evolutionary basis”, he added.
“Humor is strongly correlated with intelligence, which explains why women value men with a great sense of humor, as intelligence was crucial for survival throughout our evolutionary history when we mostly lived in hunter-gatherer groups. Men, on the other hand, prefer women who laugh at their humor”.
Of course, there are those who vehemently disagree.
One objector even said that the study itself was “funny”.
Another tweeted: “Can we stop debating this, please? Beyond the derivative binary premise, it’s still a totally subjective thing and the testing was even more so”.
I don't know about you but I find people who consider themselves funny to be really unfunny. It doesn’t matter which gender they belong to.
I will even go so far as to add that many stand-up comedians can’t get me to laugh!
Also, I’m not the type to laugh for the sake of laughing.
I’m not kidding. I have watched live and/or listen to these highly-rated Malaysian comedians: Kevin Jay, Jason Leong, Douglas Lim, Harith Iskandar, Papi Zak, Rizal Van Geyzel, Kuah Jenhan, Joanne Kam, Juliana Heng, Stephen Fernando, Phoon Chi Ho, Monty and a couple of others – only a few, I’m sorry to say, could, at best, solicit just a wee laugh from me. Honest.
Putting that aside, it’s interesting to note that out of the 12 names I’ve listed – only two are women! Therefore, dare I say that the Greengross study may have had some truth in it after all? Dare I?
BTW, good comedy is not always present!
And anyway, humor is personal. And biased. Ha-ha!
I may not be a stand-up comedian but I know a little about being humorous. I have presented many humorous speeches at Toastmasters meetings – that count too, don’t they?