2/ It feels like modern (cable-TV era) humor began with identity humor, whether explicit (say Apu) or implicit (people in Florida who leave turn indicators on = old people). It was mostly self-directed in amirite style.
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3/ I like Apu but I was surprised to learn most 2nd-gen Indian-Americans don't. See Hari Kondabulu's "Problem with Apu". But in general, identity humor is just not funny because real humans are funnier than any particular reductive idea of any group of them.
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4/ The 90s seemed to be mostly about so-called "observational" humor, which you can think of as being about behavior qua behavior as opposed to behavior as a marker of identity.
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5/ "Florida turn signal" jokes are identity jokes about old people, but Seinfeld's joke about having to navigate a bank line like a rat in a maze is pure observational. It's about a behavior, no matter who does it.
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6/ I think the reason observational humor worked in the 90s is that it was largely _normie_ observational humor with no non-normies around to call out (for instance) ableist assumptions or simple ignorances that would make a joke stupid/uninteresting to the right kind of expert.
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7/ Example: the joke about grocery stores carrying peeled oranges in their own packaging a year or two ago was tagged as "ableist" because apparently people with some disabilities rely on such packaging to eat fruit. It is unwitting amirite normie identity humor not observational
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8/ The '00s were a bit of a comedy wasteland with the notable exception of South Park, which triggered the shift from observational to what I call false-consciousness humor. Humor poking fun at utopian delusions people have about their current or future conditions.
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Replying to
Dilbert started in 1989 dude. It's peak popularity was probably early 90s.
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