The Muffin Joke Is So Funny!

Jack Balkin says that the muffin joke is so funny:

Balkinization: Repeat after me: The Muffin Joke is NOT funny: This article [by John Tierney] in the New York Times asserts that the muffin joke is not funny; we only laugh at it because we want to get along with other people in social situations.I disagree. When I first heard the muffin joke, I thought it was very funny. Still do.... The muffin joke is funny because it is self-undermining. The punch line undermines the suspension of disbelief that the joke's narrative presumes. It is kind of like breaching the fourth wall in drama. It's like the line in Dr. Strangelove "You can't fight in here. This is the War Room!" or the Atheist Hymn we came up with in high school: "There is no God, there is no God, He told me so himself"...

I agree: I think the muffin joke is so funny. Why, it is even funny when told by as low-status an individual as John Tierney:

What’s So Funny? Well, Maybe Nothing - New York Times: Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Freud and the many theorists who have tried to explain laughter based on the mistaken premise that they’re explaining humor. Occasionally we’re surprised into laughing at something funny, but most laughter has little to do with humor. It’s an instinctual survival tool for social animals, not an intellectual response to wit. It’s not about getting the joke. It’s about getting along....

“Laughter is an honest social signal because it’s hard to fake,” Professor Provine says. “We’re dealing with something powerful, ancient and crude. It’s a kind of behavioral fossil showing the roots that all human beings, maybe all mammals, have in common.”... Professor Panksepp thinks the brain has ancient wiring to produce laughter so that young animals learn to play with one another. The laughter stimulates euphoria circuits in the brain and also reassures the other animals that they’re playing, not fighting. “Primal laughter evolved as a signaling device to highlight readiness for friendly interaction,” Professor Panksepp says. “Sophisticated social animals such as mammals need an emotionally positive mechanism to help create social brains and to weave organisms effectively into the social fabric.”...

Which brings us back to the muffin joke. It was inflicted by social psychologists at Florida State University on undergraduate women.... The women put in the underling position were a lot more likely to laugh at the muffin joke (and others almost as lame) than were women in the control group.... In some cases the woman watching was designated the boss; in other cases she was the underling or a co-worker of the person on the videotape. When the woman watching was the boss, she didn’t laugh much at the muffin joke. But when she was the underling or a co-worker, she laughed much more, even though the joke-teller wasn’t in the room to see her. When you’re low in the status hierarchy, you need all the allies you can find, so apparently you’re primed to chuckle at anything even if it doesn’t do you any immediate good...

Comments

[dogfacegeorge]

So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it’s hot in here!”
And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! A talking muffin!”

[John Emerson]

It was weird that he had to drag in Plato, Freud, and everyone else to introduce a generic psychologist's theory of humor that doesn't seem to go anywhere. A lot of hooplah for not much.

[ThresherK]

What about the art of telling a bad joke well? Johnny Carson, Bob Newhart and Garrison Keillor are three people I can think of who were doing "meta" humor before the term was invented.

"What makes you think I'm not wearing a tuxedo?"

[Paul Neureiter]

Everyone I told the joke to today thought it was a riot. The audience: boss, co-worker, subordinate, and spouse. I'm still laughing at the joke.

[Matt]

You know, one of the things I've been thankful for was Times Select making it hard, if not impossible, for me to have to see the consistantly stupid John Tierney. I don't appreciate you taking that away from me.

[D-Slam]

I thought it was funny, and I don't need to impress anyone!

[Bill]

My 16-year-old tells this joke really well and it cracks me up every time. His version has the second muffin exclaiming in a panicky voice, "Ahhh! A talking muffin!" The Ahhh sounds just like Homer Simpson. But I suppose Tierney doesn't find the Simpsons funny either.

[Bruce Moomaw]

I wonder what Tierney would say about Groucho's unwillingness to belong to any club that would have him for a member?

[Ben V-L]

What is nearly as amusing as the muffin joke is watching conservative columnists scramble for tolerable topics to meet their deadlines.

[crack]

I heard that as a sausage joke. I loved it.

[Barry]

I tried it out on a co-worker; she though it was funny. Frickin' Tierny.

[trotsky]

Garrison Keilor also tells that joke -- only the punchline is "The dog says, 'Whaddaya know! It's a talking horse!' "

[Kelly]

Two fish are swimming along and come up on a third fish. The new fish says "the water's great today !".
The first two fish look at him and continue along. After about ten minutes one turns to the other and asks "what the heck is water?".

[Ben V-L]

A grasshopper hops up to a bar, and the bartender says "Hey, a grasshopper! We have a drink named after you."

To which the flattered grasshopper replied, "Oh really!? Irving?"

[Mark]

You all need to get out more, it is not that funny.

[Paul J. Reber]

I'm sure there are important social aspects to humor since so much of it occurs during inter-personal interactions. However, I've always had a strong hunch that the positive response to humor is related to a drive for new information (learning). When a joke is funny, it's often because it makes you think or see something in a way you didn't before. You can focus on the novelty/surprise element of that, but those are both going to co-occur with the fact that you are having a new thought or idea. Like, "why do we readily accept the idea of a talking muffin in jokes, that's actually weird."

This approach is consistent with the general point that jokes are generally not that funny the second time -- there's nothing new to learn anymore. But it doesn't make clear why an effective joke has to have a suddenness of the new idea and why the response to this is overt laughter.

I think the positive response to humor is part of a broader basic drive to acquire information. Most of our entertainment is organized around hearing stories you hadn't heard before, whether it's tv dramas, blogs, books or entertainment news. Sports as an industry appears to exist solely to create stories to experience and is quite enjoyable for it.

In all of these entertainment cases, I think the enjoyment drawn is related to how well the new idea fits in among things you already new (why *do* we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?). The genius of comedy (and other entertainment) is finding common themes that are delivered to resonate with a wide audience. You might even speculate that the current problems with the "news" media come from the fact that they are trying to market novel stories to as wide a population as possible to be entertaining. This drives them towards Anna Nicole Smith and love-crazed astronauts which can be easily understood and learned from by a wider audience than details of obstruction of justice in the Libby trial.

By way of disclosure, I'll mention that I actually study learning and memory, which is of course why I see it as the most important thing in the world. I don't study humor seriously, although I do enjoy it in both low-brow and high-brow forms. And of course, I'm sharing my thoughts here because I hope that it may inspire a new thought among the readers here who might find a moments entertainment in it.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

The muffin joke is funny, and the meta joke reminds me of an unintentionally funny meta-meta joke experience.

Knock-knock jokes are of course considered incredibly funny by young kids. Older kids aren't as amused, but...

I've had good luck with 10-12 year olds who like the interrupting cow meta-knock-knock joke. It goes:

A: Knock Knock

B: Who's There?

A: Interrupting Cow!

B: Interrup---- A: MOOOOOOO!

Older kids can generally appreciate the little game played with the knock-knock joke.

I tried it once on a too-suave 13 year old girl I was babysitting once with her 14 and 10 year-old brothers.

It went

ME: Knock Knock
HER: Who's There
ME: Interrupting Cow
HER: That's not funny.....

At that, both of the brothers started cracking up.

[Bernard Yomtov]

I think the muffin joke is funny.

[mistah charley, ph.d.]

I enjoyed the muffin joke quite a bit myself. Here's something else I found that is also meta-humorous, in my opinion.

A BLOND RABBI, A PRIEST AND A MINISTER WALK INTO A BAR TOGETHER...
BUT NOTHING FUNNY HAPPENS

By SCOTT STEVENS

A BLOND rabbi, a priest and a minister walked into a bar in a small Iowa town -- but nothing funny happened.

"When I saw the three of them walk in," bartender Joe Blobonski says, "I thought to myself, 'This is gonna be good.

I mean, this is the setup for thousands of jokes, so I figured
something hilarious is about to happen."

But the results were disappointing.

"They sat down at a table, and didn't say much."

Blobonski says he expected to burst out laughing when he took their order.

"The priest said, 'I'll have a Virgin Mary.' Then the minister
said, 'I'll have a Bloody Mary,' Blobonski says. "I could barely
contain myself, waiting for the blond rabbi's punch line.

"But then he says, 'I'd like a Diet Coke,' A Diet Coke?

THAT'S not funny. I couldn't believe it."

At another point the blond rabbi asked, "Do you get many rabbis in here?"

Blobonski says, "I said 'No,' waiting for the rabbi's hysterical
comeback.

"But all he said was 'too bad.' "

The three clergymen quietly drank up, paid the bill, and
left.

"It was really pretty boring, to be honest," Blobonski added.

Published on: 09/05/2004
http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/features/religion/61511

_________________

some personal comments -

1) I personally added "blond" to the joke

2) to increase the humor quotient of this story, the bartender could have said, "No Coke! Pepsi?" to the rabbi's order.

Later, when told they didn't get many rabbis at the bar, the rabbi could have said, "I'm not surprised - you ought to carry Coca Cola."

[kharris]

Beyond issues of funny and not-funny, am I the only one who has notice that there are two kinds of people in the world? (Sorry, couldn't resist). But really seriously, there are. There are people who, like Paul R., find neutral or positive explanations for what they see around them. Other people look for damning explanations for what they see around them, like the notion that we laugh because we are all chicken-shits who want our boss not to hit us. Surely, there is room for both, and more explanations, to boot, but I think it is instructive to see who reaches for what explanation.

[biggerbox]

So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it’s hot in here!”

And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! Tierney still has a column?!"

[Robert Waldmann]

I think the muffin joke is funny. In fact I laughed when I read it. There is no one else here. I have great respect for Brad DeLong, but not so much respect for my laptop (don't mean to be a snob but it runs windows XP). Also I regularly get in trouble for waking up my wife (generally when I get to patriotboy.blogspot.com on my blogroll).

I have never heard the muffin joke (even I am not lame enough to laugh at it twice).
Thanks dogfacegeorge (I was quite irritated that the muffin joke did not appear in the post).

Tierney's column is dumb, remarkably dumb. Maybe we can learn something about dumbness from Tierney. Here he sets up a false dichotomy. His resoning is "Laughter sometimes has something to do with ingratiating oneself, therefore it exists only to ingratiate oneself". The facts that people read funny books and blogs and stuff show that this is nonsense. I like to note Tierney's error with the exact same words in my mind (which remind me of how often I observe his error)

The false dichotomy which is more common than any other error of thought and than any valid method of thought

Watch out, I may have just infected you with a brain worm.

[Bloix]

You want meta, we got meta:

A rabbi, a fish, and a duck walk into a bar. Bartender says, "Is this a joke?"

[knzn]

Here's my theory: The joke is funny. That's why the "underlings" laugh. "Bosses" don't laugh because laughter is undignified, and being susceptible to laughter wound interfere with her responsibility as a "boss".

[Sam TH]

A geek version of the cow joke:

A: Knock Knock

B: Who's There?

A: Interrupting Coefficent of Static Friction!

B: Interrup---- A: MUUUUUUU!

You have to know the cow version of the joke to find this funny.

[D-Slam]

there are multiple levels to the muffin joke, that might be why it works (or something). Muffin B exclaims in surprise that muffin A can talk, but of course, muffin B shouldn't really be surprised because it can talk too! So the joke "doesn't make sense".

OTOH, if you switch the protagonists (for example) to a man and a duck in a lake, with the duck saying "this water is sure cold, huh?" and the man saying "holy cow, a talking duck!", the joke makes a bit more "sense", it is still breaking the suspension of disbelief that jokes require, but isn't nearly as funny it seems to me. I'm not sure why.

[Michael Carroll]

This reminds me of something that happened once when I was in college. A buddy of mine and I were sitting at the end of a very long table with some bigwig at the opposite end.

While we were eating he muttered something positively unintelligble and suddenly a wave of laughter rolled from his end down to us. We instinctively started chuckling. After a moment my friend asked "What did he say, anyway?" I said, " I don't know but I'm sure it was f---ing hilarious." ...and which had us laughing about five minutes after everyone else had stopped which ingratiated us with no one at all.

OK, so you had to be there.

[Walt]

Toddlers completely falsify all cynical explanations for humor.

[C. L. Ball]

The muffin joke is amusing but I didn't laugh. "A family walks into a talent agent's office..." -- that's funny and I laughed myself silly at _The Aristocrats_. The _South Park_ version is fucking hilarious -- literally! Carroll's story made me laugh; it is funny and all the more so because it is subversive.

Tierney does not say that *all* laughter is designed to ingratiate oneself, but that most laughter -- the behavior of laughing, not joke-telling or humor -- is socially based, not intellectually based. We have the results of the FSU controlled experiment to support this and Provine's observations of when people laugh. On the other hand, against Tierney, we have ... anecdotes about the muffin joke.

The thing Tierney misses is why we might laugh at others. Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQIwT4PdRa4

I nearly pissed myself. There's a better quality iFilm version. But I'm laughing at the newscaster, not with her.

[KevinNYC]

My friend's three year tells the interrupting cow joke this way.

Knock-Knock.
Who's there?
Cow. Funny.

Which I personally think is hiliarious. Because let's face it the idea of cow knocking on your door should be funny.

The grasshopper joke reminds me of the joke Robin Williams tells in the Aristocrats.

A rabbi walks into a bar with a frog on his shoulder.
The bartender says, "Hey, where did you get that?"
The frog says, "Brooklyn. They got hundreds of 'em."

[C. L. Ball]

>My friend's three-year [old] tells
>the interrupting cow joke this way.

>Knock-Knock.
>Who's there?
>Cow. Funny.

The kid's got meta-humor down already.

[joeo]

C. L. Ball is right. Some college professors get caught by this into thinking that they are a lot funnier than they actually are.

[joeo]

Teirney's column is about 10 years late though:

http://books.google.com/books?id=vOEa0L86SxAC&pg=RA1-PA553&lpg=RA1-PA553&dq=pinker+laughter+how+the+mind+works+provine&source=web&ots=SoUcJ63CtB&sig=VXZ4m7YhnqK0jfmveFOneErIhqA#PRA1-PA553,M1