How to be funny: A comic’s advice to content teams
If you’ve ever watched Disney’s The Little Mermaid, you might remember the profound wisdom that Sebastian the Crab shares at the beginning of the song, Under the Sea, saying “Ariel, the human world – it’s a mess.”
How accurate.
You see, the world is a mess. A big scary mess, filled with big scary things, events, people, and thoughts that drive all of the anxiety that we experience on a daily basis. Yet here we are, still passionately living our best lives. Isn’t the dichotomy beautiful?
Of course, the only way to fix a mess is to first recognize one. This where much of humor typically lies – in the conflict between the ideal, the reality, and the various competing agendas people hold. The incongruences are usually rich with irony.
Not all humor is related to pointing out what’s wrong with the world though. For content creators, opportunities to leverage humor include challenging existing notions about the world and enlightening others by offering new insights and unique perspectives.
