The Evolution of Comedy

Most comedy, in its essence, is making fun of dumb people. If you think about it, most jokes boil down to that core idea. The dumber the person is, the funnier we find them. This is “laugh at” funny, not “laugh with.”

Humans are evolutionarily wired to gain pleasure from making fun of dumb people, especially the dumbest of the dumb (see the movie Dumb and Dumber). It would be bad for stupid people to reproduce and spread their genes, creating more stupid people. Obviously, stupidity is not a beneficial trait for survival in any respect.

Comedy is one way to make dumb people look bad and convince others (especially potential mates) to avoid them. Ridiculing dumb people either encourages them to smarten up, or ostracizes them from society. Either way, the gene pool is strengthened. Insult comedy has quite literally saved humanity.

Originally published at https://steemit.com on January 4, 2019.