Why Comedy is Everywhere: Business, Coping or Cynicism?

Why are all your friends becoming stand-up comedians? One has started stand-up, another has launched a podcast, and a dating profile asks for someone funny. In this video: live stand-up passing nine hundred million dollars in 2023, why funny is attractive (Erika Langley and Michelle Shiota's six experiments), Henri Bergson's idea that we laugh at the mechanical, incongruity, Aristophanes' The Knights and Cleon, Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason and the modern cynic, the respectable rebel, and what happens when everything has to entertain. This video offers interpretations, not proof: the dating studies used imagined dates, and Sloterdijk was not writing about stand-up or TikTok. CHAPTERS 0:00 Your friend, the comedian 0:29 Humour's old territory 0:52 The business answer 1:14 The dating profile 1:25 Langley and Shiota's experiments 2:19 Humour versus being a comedian 2:33 Bergson and the mechanical 3:07 Incongruity and punchlines 3:20 Laughter is social 3:44 Athens, Aristophanes and Cleon 4:35 Sloterdijk's modern cynic 5:14 Comedy meets cynicism 5:58 The respectable rebel 6:48 Everything has to entertain 7:31 Beginning or end of criticism? 8:03 Cleon, roasted then elected SOURCES AND FURTHER READING 1. Langley, E. B. & Shiota, M. N. (2023). Funny date, creative mate? Unpacking the effect of humor on romantic attraction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167223120... 2. Bergson, H. (1900). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (C. Brereton & F. Rothwell, Trans.). Free text: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4352 3. Aristophanes (424 BCE). Knights (E. O'Neill Jr., Trans.). Perseus Digital Library (free English text): https://catalog.perseus.org/catalog/u... 4. Sloterdijk, P. (1987). Critique of Cynical Reason (M. Eldred, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. German original: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (1983). Stick to Wonder: Animated explainers about the strange, the surprising and the big questions. Subscribe so the next one finds you. #standupcomedy #comedy #philosophy