Humor Harmony describes the relationship between humor and the full context that humor is a part of. In most humor chosen to serve as an example of humor, the humor is harmonious. Let’s consider then a contrasting case in which the humor isn’t.

Significant Other: We should take a trip this weekend.
Other Significant Other: Maybe we head over to Breakup City.

This counts as humor as ‘Breakup City’ is a nonsense location, but the humor is not pleasant. The second person actually wishes to break up, and the first person is surprised and hurt. I know this because I invented them. The full context topic of relationship breakup is serious, and using humor to convey this information is disturbing. If the humor were merely a prelude to a serious conversation, that’d be one thing. But if the second person continued indefinitely in a light, snarky manner, then the humor is quietly communicating something painful: that the end of the relationship isn’t important because the relationship wasn’t important.

Like all characteristics of humor, the perception of harmony varies by individual. Humor is a neurological sum. Teasing out which pieces contribute in which proportions is an involved process even for just one example and one observer. When humor context components are numerous and complex and the full context components are lush, it’s quite possible that no two out of a million observers have completely identical reactions.

Return to the second Full Context component Humor Percentage

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