Latest / Millennial Mental Health Channel / While the World is Burning, Humans Are Laughing

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While the World is Burning, Humans Are Laughing · Millennial Mental Health Channel

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Memes to help us cope with climate change anxiety. That'd be like this witch
0:05
doesn't know what they're talking about. This is Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm
0:12
doctor Justin Romano, a Child and Adolescent psychiatry fellow, and I'm Anti Creo,
0:16
a licensed clinical therapist. Our podcast is here because we wanted to start
0:20
a much needed conversation about mental health. Our goal is to teach you as
0:23
much as we can by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts in the mental
0:28
health field. We will discuss topics like mood disorders, psychotic disorders, substance
0:32
use, personality disorders, and many more. Millennial Mental Health Channel buy Millennials
0:37
for everyone. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. M MHC is a production
0:42
of Spreaker from iHeartMedia. I yeah, just the two of us, we
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can make it if we're traders of two of us and I I had to
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yeah, I know, I know you did. When we're getting ready to
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record, I was thinking about, like, I gotta mention, like here,
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we're really fortunate that like people reach out. You mentioned it in the
1:10
last episode where we had chess, like people reach out and like want to
1:14
be on the show, and like that's really cool. We feel really fortunate
1:17
that we can have such amazing, cool guests that have such cool stories to
1:21
share. But it's also just really fun when it's the two of us,
1:25
like you mentioned with your song. So I'm excited I missed. Obviously,
1:30
I've seen you every time we record, but I missed you. Just have
1:33
you all to myself. Yeah, well it's been a while because I did
1:36
the music episode and then two guests, and so yeah, it feels nice
1:40
being back in the saddle. There's like two months. It feels like,
1:44
yeah, husband, I could say it feels like but obviously like we can
1:47
like fact check, but we're not gonna do that. We're just gonna say
1:49
it feels like two months. Yeah, And yeah, my life was kind
1:53
of hectic too because I was moving and I was like living with my parents
1:56
for a month, and I was using someone else's equipment. So sorry that
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my sound was all you listeners out there who really much value the sound quality,
2:04
Sorry it was bad and it was. But we're back done living at
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mom and Dad's basement. Guess to just be with Dana and Leo. We're
2:16
back to normal. What do I want to start with I know you have
2:20
a shout out. Do you want to go first, and then I'll go
2:21
after. Yeah. So I officially started my new job and a big fan
2:27
of the Shyanne Regional Medical Center at marketing department. They were really fun to
2:30
work with and we recorded a couple of videos together. I told him if
2:34
they listened to the podcast that I would shout them out. So if they
2:37
don't listen to this episode, then I just look like a complete idiot and
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we will cut this out from any further any future uploads. My shout out
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is to my friend Mike fetch He. I don't know if I told you
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this justin, but he's actually been a listener of the show since like the
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beginning, even early on when my mic sucked and we were just trying to
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figure this out. Like he's been listening, and he texted me it's been
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now like two months whenever that Titan submarine thing happened. Is right around the
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time he texted me basically asking about like the psychology of humor and like why
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we laugh at certain things even when they're like catastrophes, And I'll talk about
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it here in a little bit. But he pitched the idea. I thought
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it was great, we got the episode written, but then you know,
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we had that little bit of a break. We've had guests, we've been
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sitting on it for a couple of months, so I'm excited we finally get
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it to record it. With that being said, though, we also want
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to shout out our friend of the show, Jamie Maylor. She was on
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the show actually about a year ago in September. She has her own show
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called The Unlearned Podcast. I know they recently did an episode on humor,
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and we just thought it'd be important to give you all the chance to hear
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it and know that it's out there, so we're going to add it to
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our show notes. Jamie's a friend of the show. She has a book
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coming out. I think we've talked about it. We'll have her on kind
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of in the near future when the book comes out, so she's a good
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friend of ours. Figured we'd share that with you all, but without further
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ado, we're just gonna jump into it. I mentioned it a little bit,
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but yeah, we want to talk about humor, the psychology of humor,
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why do we laugh at certain things? And really, as I was
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reflecting after Mike had reached out about the episode, just thinking about the last
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few years and how much it really has been like a fever dream and feeling
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like it's just everything is kind of blended together. It's been a shit show,
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really, no other better way to describe it. It's been a shit
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show with COVID, with trying to get back to normal with all the things,
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and when I reflect, really one of the things that's helped cope with
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it is humor. Back when TikTok was really taken off in twenty nineteen,
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you know, it was definitely somebody who was a big fan of Vine.
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I would always watch Vin's a little six second videos, so TikTok was something
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that I was like, this is close enough. The videos are a little
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longer my attention span, I think, and make it. I'll watch it.
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And it was funny. And what I would do is I would watch
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the videos. I'd save the funny ones and I'd rewatch them with keV and
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like that was kind of our thing that we still do. When the pandemic
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hit, like it feels like TikTok really took off, like there was nothing
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else to do, Like we were at home on our phones umpteen hours a
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day just just scrolling the TikTok, and there's a lot of things that just
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took off humor wise. Sometimes when I'm on TikTok, people will like post
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things of like sounds of twenty twenty or things that really like take me back
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to like when things were going on and really remind me of the time that
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we had to be at home. With that being said, I think it's
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also shifted our like collective societal humor. Things on the surface that really don't
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seem that funny are somehow like hilarious. Back when I wrote the show notes,
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there was this like trend going around with Grimace. Did you did you
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see this or have you heard of this? Or is this like foreign to
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you? As I'm about to explain it, it's gonna sound really fucking dumb,
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but basically had McDonald's it was like Grimmace's birthday. Apparently Grimace's birthday sometime
5:54
in the summer. So what they did is they made a Grimace shake,
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no idea, what flavor was, just no, it was a purple milkshake.
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And people would make these videos that where they would be like happy birthday
6:03
Grimace, blah blah. Got the Grimace milkshake and they drink it and then
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it would cut to like the most like horrific twisted horror movie scene with like
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this ominous music, and it like it was so weird, but I would
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like save every single one show it to get me because I thought it was
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like kind of funny, but it was still weird. So I'm like,
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why am I even laughing at this? Along those lines, like even as
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an age, like even with like nationwide and worldwide events looking really bad,
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people still find a way to make them like humorous. So when I wrote
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this, and I think where Mike really got the inspiration for pitching the idea,
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it was like the Titan submarine had just like exploded and had the whole
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issue and it was catastrophic, Like it sucks on the surface, no pun
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intended. It's really not that funny that like five people in a submarine like
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lost their lives in like an stream mistake, accident, whatever you want to
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call it. But TikTok and Twitter like did not stop from like like making
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jokes and there was memes and there was videos and like that one incident incident
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like subjectively or objectively like it made it like things they made humor out of
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it, and I'm not afraid to admit that, like I laughed at some
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of the stuff, like a lot of people did. Even more recently from
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after we wrote the notes, there's that incident. I don't know if you
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heard about this, justin in Montgomery, Alabama, there's a boat incident where
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I think the basic premise was there was a these people and like a smaller
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boat and this big boat with people on it was trying to like park,
7:41
do boats park. They're trying to get to the dock, and the smaller
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boat wasn't moving, so the security guard came to tell him, like,
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hey, you gotta move. The people who are on the boat were probably
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intoxicated, were very rude. A big brawl took place, big fight.
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Well, all these people who were white, and this is important to the
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story, all these people who were white jumped out of the boat and started
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attacking the one security guy. So then all these other people who were on
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like the other boat or who are near it who saw it happening. And
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also the security guard was black. All these other people who were African American
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or black jumped out of the other boat, got on the dock and helped
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him and like tried to protect them, and like Twitter and TikTok turns into
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memes and all this hilarious things. But really, if you think about it,
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Montgomery, Alabama and Alabama and the South in general, historically it's not
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the nicest to black people or people of color. So like, there's definitely
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like racial undertones with that situation. That part's not funny. That memes were
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pretty funny though, where like all these people got their ass kicked and there
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was like a chair involved and people were like anyway, so it was the
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whole things. But like, but like, why is that funny song?
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Long story, short, long winded monologue that I've had, Like why are
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these things funny? Why do we as people, either for as long as
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we've existed or just more recently, why do we turn to humor to help
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us deal with uncomfortable and unfortunate, unfortunate situations? I don't think we knew
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before this episode. Hopefully by the end of it we have some idea,
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but I think it's important that we talk about it. Yeah, and I
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always like starting off with a mindfulness question, What does humor mean to you?
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How do you use it in your life? Why is it important to
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you. I feel like that's a huge part of my job, you know,
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working with teens, like a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year
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old off the bat is not just gonna like open up and like talk right
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away or like not every single one, and sometimes you need humor to open
9:30
them up to get them to feel comfortable. One line that I always use
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with kids, whether they come into my office crying, or they're stressed,
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or they're visibly just nervous, they'll come in if they if they're pretty open
9:43
and tell me what's going on. You know, I'll let them talk,
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let them get it out, and then I'll say something like, you know,
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we've known each other for a minute and a half, two minutes,
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and I just really appreciate you feeling comfortable to share all that. And usually
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kids will laugh, give a little chuckle, and from there we're moving forward.
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So honestly, for me, like humor I think is really important and
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work outside of work, something that helps me distress. The TikTok videos that
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I watched at the end of the day with Kevy helps us distress. I
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think humor is really important, probably in all aspects of my life. Humor
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is like the ultimate vibe check, right, or it's like if you could
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laugh with someone, it's like, okay, if they passed the vibe check.
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I remember being young and the first time I really made my dad laugh,
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like from the bottom, like a just a solid guffa, Like that
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was such a huge moment in my life. I was like, yes,
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I did it. I made him laugh. And then I realized, like
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all my best friends, the reason why we connected so much was because of
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humor. Yea. So humor is such a big part of human connection.
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It is something that makes us human. I researched this actually a couple of
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years ago, so this is actually probably about ten years ago now because I'm
10:52
getting old. But I remember learning that we're the only animal that like laughs,
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that uses humor, because you know that we know of at least,
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I mean, I guess technically marine mammals could, but like gorillas, like
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if you tickle their feet, they'll laugh, but they don't laugh with their
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communication with their body language. So I think it's really interesting that this is
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one of the things that makes us human and it's something that really unites us
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all. I also like how you said a couple of years ago, and
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then he's like, oh shit, maybe it's like ten years ago. Like
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time just kind of flies. We're getting old. Even though I even though
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I brought it up, I was gonna say, don't remind me, but
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I'm the one that brought it up. So never mind. With all that,
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we do have some stats and facts that we want to go over.
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I could take the first one. So in two thousand and one, John
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Nesleck and Peter Dirks they conducted a study looking at the use of humor and
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social interactions and a person's daily life. So, out of the two hundred
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and eighty six participants that they had, they found that people use. People's
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use of humor as a means of coping with stress is positively related to how
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enjoyable their social lives are and to how confident they feel when interacting with each
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other. So basically, the way I took that is, if you use
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humor when you cope with stress, your life feels more enjoyable and you feel
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you feel like you can interact with people competently. You just feel better about
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how you interact with others, according to those researchers, compared to those who
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do not. People who use humor to cope, may make light of their
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own problems, thus easing the burden experience by others, and they may provide
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others with more palatable, so more humorous and less serious forms of support,
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particularly appropriate for minor day to day problems. Such ease and success may translate
12:39
to the greater enjoyment and greater sense of confidence in day to day interaction.
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I was thinking of that as like, maybe in like work relationships or work
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interactions, being able to make like little things funny or like comical just makes
12:54
things more enjoyable. I've been on teams where like, nobody's funny and we
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feel the team kind of sucks, and then I've been on teams where like
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a lot of people more funny. I'm like, this works, not that
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bad, even if it is bad in the moment, even if it is
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stressful. But really, my main takeaway from this is people who use humor
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to cope end up using that in their interactions with others. This then has
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a positive impact on them, potentially impacting their use of humor to cope in
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the future. It then can spread to others from there. So, if
13:24
I'm someone who likes to use humor to cope. It can go to my
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coworkers or my friends or other people interact with. They may be more likely
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to use it themselves in their life. They might be able to cope better
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with humor, and it just kind of keeps passing on and on. Cool.
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I bet you guys didn't think we'd be throwing so many like papers and
13:41
research at you in a humor episode. But in two thousand and five there
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was an article that was titled if we don't use humor or, if we
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didn't use humor, we'd cry Where wands are at all? Examine the relationship
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between use of humor with nurses in the workplace and the reaches. Researchers found
14:01
that through humor use, nurses had a higher chance of rating positively for overall
14:05
job satisfaction because of their ability to cope better with the stress. Next up,
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in twenty twenty one, Dana Peters from the University of Helsinki in Finland.
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I don't know if I said that right, but it sounded good.
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Did their master's thesis on the use of memes to cope with climate change anxiety.
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That's where we're headed. Yeah, THECES dissertations like very high level research,
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that's where we're headed looking at memes anyway. In their research, they
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found that while only a handful of participants actively sought out humor as a means
14:50
to cope with climate change anxiety, a large number of them reported feelings of
14:54
happiness, relief, reassurance, validation, or empowerment after looking at the climate
14:58
change memes presented in the research. So they weren't like necessarily like I need
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to find climate change memes to make feel better. They were just like,
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when presented, this makes me feel better, which then makes me think when
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presented with anything funny or humorous, I could probably feel a little better.
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I can't imagine saying that sentence, though, to someone a hundred years ago
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memes to help us cope with climate change anxiety. That'd be like this witch
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doesn't know what they're talking about. I feel like I don't know how many
15:31
years ago, but someone had mentioned in school that like there's gonna be like
15:37
a whole subsection of maybe not archaeology or like anthropology. I don't know what
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a lot of these ologies mean, but that like will need to focus on
15:48
the use of like memes and emojis, on like how people describe stuff.
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Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it'll be like a whole section of school.
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You can entire college courses on it. It's like, I have a minor
16:02
in memology, Where was that I needed that? That would have been an
16:07
easy minor. I could have double minored all right for our next and I
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believe final study in twenty eighteen by Newness at All examine the use of humor
16:18
with grief so in the process of getting over loss. So like the previous
16:23
study we mentioned, the researchers looked at how humor was used as a coping
16:27
mechanism with nurses who do death related work, and they found that humor helped
16:33
ease the stress that comes with being an end of life or in palliative nursing.
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So all of these studies are here to say that it seems like humor
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helps us cope. It seems like when we're using humor, we're a little
16:47
bit happier, we're a little bit more understanding, and the stress of the
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world isn't as heavy, even if it's only for like a little bit,
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like even if it's like, you know, for ten twenty thirty minutes whatever,
16:57
Like it's almost like in a break from like everything that is in the
17:03
world, Like there's so much shit going on, even just thinking of this
17:07
last week, like Mitch McConnell froze again, I think in the news like
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that happened today. Donald Trump got a mug shot that was pretty dope.
17:19
I guess I'm not really choosing anything that's like that. I shouldn't laughed at
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Mitch McConnell freezing, but like, that's that's another thing. Twenty years ago,
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are people laughing at this? I don't know, But now anything like
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that I knew. I knew as soon as that video came out the first
17:37
time, there's gonna be so many like things about it on Twitter and TikTok,
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like that's just that's just the direction we're headed in. And I did.
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I love that one video where they took Mitch McConnell freezing the first time,
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and as soon as he kind of starts staring off into the distance,
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you hear Simon and garfuncle sound of silence where it's like, hello, doctor,
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smile, That's what I'm saying. But it's a medical emergency and they
18:06
turned it into something really funny, And yeah, I guess it's a way
18:08
to deal with it. And process it, but and trending, like it's
18:11
something that like goes viral and blows up. Like yeah, you mentioned like
18:17
a hundred years ago, like what would people say now, but what would
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twenty years ago? That's way. Yeah, Honestly a lot of this stuff
18:26
was still brand new twenty years ago. Yeah, all right, we have
18:30
we wanted to talk a little bit about like ego defense mechanisms since this,
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you know, this is a mental health podcast. There are lots of ways
18:37
that we deal with stress or attacks to our ego, like if someone makes
18:45
us feel dumb, for example. But just because we love talking about Sigmund
18:49
Freud on the show, because yeah he's great and he wasn't obsessed with phenises,
18:55
but he actually made a lot of really great points that we actually still
18:59
use today in mental health and in psychiatry. He developed this concept of ego
19:03
defense mechanisms, and anytime there is something that hurts your ego, these defense
19:07
mechanisms tend to come into play or honestly, if there's anything difficult that you
19:12
have to go through, So even seeing something stressful or bad news or dealing
19:18
with climate change might invoke an ego defense mechanism and ego defense mechanisms are typically
19:25
broken down into like immature, neurotic, mature, and some common immature defense
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mechanisms. So if you do any of these, it might be a sign
19:34
that maybe you need some different defense mechanisms. But projecting or putting your feelings
19:41
on other people, like if I'm angry all the time, I say the
19:45
world is angry all the time, which is not necessarily true, or passive
19:51
aggression is another immature defense mechanism, acting out and denial. All of those
19:56
are not seen as mature as maybe not the best best ways of dealing with
20:00
stressors. For neurotic mechanisms, we have obsessive tendencies repression, dissociation. I
20:08
was thinking about this earlier when we talked about you'd just just recently mentioned like
20:15
climate change anxiety and like or just dealing with stressors. Then like the humor
20:19
can like help stuff feel less heavy, and then I mentioned something about like
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yeah, it gives us like a little break from from the world, Like
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that's that's kind of like it like dissociated a little bit. I remember one
20:30
time I saw like a client or patient years ago who that was their thing,
20:34
Like that was their defense mechanism, like they would literally when things got
20:38
stressful in session talking to one of the other providers, they would like dissociate
20:44
right then and there and they just wouldn't be present. And that was that
20:47
was how they dealt with it. And now that was it was hard to
20:49
watch, but also like it made sense, Like it basically gave you in
20:53
your mind if you can picture like a different room that you could walk into
20:59
and shut the door behind you and be safe, even just for a little
21:02
bit when things are stressful. And then the last one from neurotic mechanisms is
21:07
displacement, which I like to think of displacement as you're mad at your boss,
21:11
so you take it out in your family instead, you're displacing that anger.
21:15
Dissociation is interesting because it's seen as a neurotic mechanism, but I think
21:19
a lot of times people use it as a like a last resort where if
21:25
you're in a situation where you cannot physically leave, you will mentally leave,
21:29
and people sometimes do that to survive trauma situations. So in no way do
21:33
we want to shame these defense mechanisms, because if you do dissociate, it's
21:38
probably there's a good reason for it. But last, but certainly not least.
21:41
We have mature defense mechanisms. Number one on the list being humor.
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Humor is often seen as a mature way to handle with stressors. There's also
21:52
sublimation, which the example I give for that is, say if someone is
21:57
really mad at their father and they're really angry and they've got a lot of
22:00
aggression, and then they play tackle football to get out that aggression in a
22:06
socially acceptable way. That's sublimation. We have suppression, where you hold down
22:11
your emotions but then bring them back later to process them. And then altruism.
22:17
And I've got a lot of people who've been through a lot of childhood
22:18
trauma who then want to make the world a better place and do a lot
22:22
of activism, help a lot of kids out, and that's altruism. So
22:26
those are more of the healthy defense mechanisms that I hope it helps you understand
22:32
and gain more awareness and insight into what you do under stress and maybe give
22:36
us some ideas as to what you could do to be healthier. I'm gonna
22:40
be vulnerable for a second to read passive aggression under immature defense mechanism, I
22:48
could definitely I'd be doing that sometimes yeah, I need to think about that.
22:53
That's I mean, that's why we're here. We want information to be
22:57
easily attainable and digestible. And if I'm learning something as we record, I
23:03
feel like that's good because hopefully that means other people were learning something. I
23:07
like it. I like your speaking of learning something. I'm gonna have my
23:14
own nerd alert real quick. Are you ready for this? Okay? Here
23:17
we go back in middle school when we were learning about Okay, I was
23:25
about to say, here's a nerd alert, and I sound like a dummy.
23:27
What we were learning about the states of matter? Right? Liquid?
23:32
Gas? Solid? You fall in me? Okay? Do you know that
23:37
sublimation also means when a solid goes straight to a gas and skips the liquid
23:45
part. Yes, like dry ice. Yes, that's right. Let's go
23:53
baby. Thank you, Miss Mitchell. Eighth grade science teacher, gram middle
24:00
School, mountin View, California, shout out. Apparently that's sublimation is also
24:04
what's happening in my colon because it turns from solids to gases without the Okay,
24:12
well, one last thing was sublimation. Let's move from the fart In
24:22
that class for extra credit, my friend and I I don't know how we
24:27
did this, but we recorded a song about sublimation. But we did it
24:34
too. This is going to be bad because I don't remember which band it
24:37
was, either Backsty Boys or in Sync Tearing Up my Heart, But we
24:42
did it with sublimation and like that, so that got us extra credit.
24:48
Just wanted to throw that out there. That's a that's a little known fact.
24:53
Cool. Yeah, I thought for sure you were going to say p
24:56
O D's Youth of the Nation, U do like a sublimation instead of all
25:02
right, we spent way too that talk. Since you hit me with your
25:08
sublimation nerd alert, I'll hit you with my own NERD alert. Perfect.
25:14
There is surprisingly little data out there on the science and neurology of humor.
25:19
According to the American Psychological Association, it wasn't really until two thousand and one
25:25
that scientists goal at all use the functional MRI the fMRI to see what areas
25:32
of the brain light up with humor. And a lot of the language processing
25:36
areas light up when you hear a joke, so that makes sense. Your
25:38
brain's got to process the language before you can actually react to the joke.
25:42
And then if you see a funny cartoon or a funny meme, your visual
25:48
processing area lights up, so depending on the medium of the joke, it
25:51
might change the way you actually process it, which I find really interesting because
25:56
I'm actually kind of a slow visual processor and sometimes my wife will show me
26:02
things and she'll say, like, it took you so long to like read
26:06
the whole joke and get it, and I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry,
26:10
I got a slow processing brain or of an auditory person. Yeah.
26:15
Also, the nucleus cucumbents in the reward pathway lights up, so similar to
26:19
what we've talked about on the show before, that dopamine lights up that nucleus
26:22
cucumbents, which makes sense. And so we know the basics of humor,
26:27
but we don't really know any of the specific brain areas. We don't know
26:30
if there's any specific dedicated brain areas or nuclei or groupings of cells, and
26:36
so this is a relatively fresh part of science, and so I'm hopeful that
26:41
in the future we start to learn more about this stuff because it's fascinating.
26:44
I think I feel like I bring it up a lot, but like the
26:45
presentations I give in the health class, like one of the things I talk
26:49
about in the self care presentation I give is talking about like looking at things
26:56
that make you laugh or smile, and like, now here in this it
26:57
is like, okay, here's some science with it. I'm not going to
27:00
use the science because it's it's high schoolers and they're not paying attention anyway,
27:03
but it's at least backed up, So that's howful. We had a few
27:11
discussion questions to end with here, like who are your biggest role models for
27:15
humor? My family and I really had like this not obsession, but like
27:18
this fan hood for George Lopez, like a sitcom, like the George Lopez
27:25
Show. We watched that. I remember a time where we'd go to my
27:27
grandma's house every Friday and we'd like watch it come out each week, and
27:33
then his stand ups, Like I remember, you know, back when getting
27:37
an iTunes gift card, a ten dollar iTunes gift card was like, man,
27:40
I could buy ten songs, or I could I could buy a whole
27:44
album. I remember one time specifically, I bought a whole George Lopez like
27:48
stand up set and I had it on my iPod. Now, like George
27:52
Lopez is a kind of a shitty person, so like, I only share
27:56
that because I can at least be like honest, Like that's where like probably
28:00
started. I think now Gabriey Glacis is one that's really funny. He's a
28:03
great storyteller. Ali Wong is hilarious. He says a lot of funny shit.
28:07
But yeah, I think probably those come to mind. I'll stick with
28:11
those. I'm happy to final answer. I like it. Let's say,
28:15
for me, it's interesting because you named off two Latin X comedians at the
28:19
beginning in Mail as well, and almost all of my influences are white dudes.
28:25
So that's the importance of representation and being able to see people who look
28:32
like you and be able to shape your humor. But Robin Williams, Jim
28:37
Carrey, those are probably my two biggest ones growing up. I'd love them
28:40
so much, you know a little bit, Adam Sandler here and there.
28:44
More recently, John Mulaney. We got to see his stand up in Oh
28:48
and he's so funny. I'm talking about his rehabs Day, his new special
28:52
Baby J on Netflix. We got to see that one live and he's just
28:56
he's so funny, he's so good. How well, I know we talked
29:00
about it a little bit, But how else do you think comedy and humor
29:03
has changed? Do you do you think we're getting darker? What do you
29:07
think? Probably? I think so much like fucked up stuff has happened that
29:11
like we got to figure out a way to cope with it, right,
29:14
Like we were like indoors for like two years. We had to like these
29:18
this big thing happened and we needed a way to cope with it. I
29:22
had a thought right as you were like reading that question. I think back
29:27
when I was in when I was in high school, when I was a
29:30
senior in high school. I've mentioned him before, but mister Cummins was my
29:33
psychology teacher, one of my favorite teachers of all time, and he talked
29:37
about humor and one thing, and I hope I'm not going to butcher it,
29:40
but I'm pretty sure he said, like what makes things funny is two
29:45
things, understanding and incongruity. So basically, the first thing is like you
29:48
understand the situation, you understand the picture that's being painted, you understand what
29:53
the other person's saying to you. And the second part of incongruity is like
29:56
there's something that doesn't fit or there's something that like no longer like makes sense
30:02
or like goes with it, but I still understand it, and I feel
30:06
like that comes up a lot with like I don't know just the way like
30:07
videos are made now. We get a lot of jokes and humor from short
30:11
form videos on TikTok or even like longer form on YouTube. So I guess,
30:17
really, to go back, I think it's changed. Yeah, we've
30:19
probably gotten a little darker. Like that's just the world has seemed to gotten
30:22
darker, so the humor has gotten darker with it. Yeah, it almost
30:26
seems as though because everyone has a voice now, everyone has access to the
30:30
internet, we're all connected. We've seen the depths, We've seen how low
30:34
humanity can go, we've seen how hot humanity can go. But it seems
30:38
like there's more anxiety and stress and even the mental health of the planet in
30:44
general is getting worse and it's coming out in our humor. Yeah, remember
30:48
growing up in the nineties or in the early two thousands, how it was
30:55
really a common thing for people to have movies that they quoted all the time,
31:00
Like it was bor at Napoleon Dynamite, Anchorman and Chappelle show, like
31:07
people would just quote those things all the time. It was a major part
31:11
of comedy and humor. But it doesn't feel like people really do that anymore.
31:17
Like those certain little viral comedy auditory things aren't as popular. It seems
31:23
like it has moved more visual and it's memes. I hate it when someone
31:30
tries to describe a funny TikTok or a funny meme to me, because it's
31:36
like you kind of need to see it here, and doing it secondhand just
31:40
isn't ever as good. So the way we're consuming media also is changing the
31:47
way we're consuming humor. In my opinion, I can't remember who said it,
31:51
but there's like an actor recently who said, like I really missed those
31:55
like B level or C level comedy films that would just come out out every
32:00
so often in theaters and people would just like watch it, and the movie
32:04
would be like an hour and a half long, and there was like a
32:07
bunch of funny stuff like step Brothers, Yeah, that whole thing hilarious,
32:10
the Hangover, same thing. There wasn't a whole lot of depth. There
32:15
wasn't a whole lot of like character arcs, redemption arcs. There was,
32:21
but like, that's true, but yeah, someone mentioned it recently. Yeah,
32:27
I think that's a good and accurate observation of needing to see thing because
32:31
actually, as I was saying my thing about like understanding in kangaruity, there's
32:36
a couple like videos I've seen recently that popped into my head that like I
32:39
should describe it, and I was like, no, I shouldn't, it's
32:43
not gonna Yeah, I wonder if this is going to lead to more generational
32:49
gaps. Like our generation who did kind of thrive on more auditory, more
32:53
quoting things, it may be harder to connect with a younger GENUA generation who
32:59
is more visual, who is more meme oriented. It's interesting to see where
33:04
this takes us. We talked about it a little bit. Do you mentioned
33:07
like, do you think our humor is getting darker? But do you think
33:09
there are any topics that you think are like too taboo or like just shouldn't
33:14
be humorized or made fun of? Society says yes. I personally say no,
33:22
I think humor is so important and that nothing should be above the level
33:25
of humor because it does help us cope with the severity of the situation sometimes.
33:30
So that's why I very much value the relationships in my life where I've
33:36
got old friends that I feel like I can say anything and everything and I
33:39
won't be judged for it. I won't be like, oh god, you
33:43
can't say that, because even though I might make a joke about something doesn't
33:47
mean that. Like it's tough though, because like I don't want to say
33:52
racist jokes and about saying but like there it seems like these days there is
34:01
no joke acceptable about transgender people, or at least the ones that have been
34:07
done have been like severely pushed back on. And I think it's important to
34:15
be able to laugh. It's important to be able to joke about these things.
34:17
And I don't think anything should be above the level. I think we
34:21
should be able to talk and joke about race if it's done in the right
34:23
way. But it's just it's such a tricky thing. Yeah, what are
34:28
your thoughts on it? There's no great answer here. I think I've seen
34:31
it before. We're like comedians will have this stance where like nobody is off
34:36
limits, but they do it in a way that's not like I'm not saying
34:38
this because I want you to feel like the worst person possible. I'm making
34:44
a joke either on stereotypes or generalizations that we can probably like laugh on that
34:51
we can all find humorous. I think when it's like one of those things,
34:54
I think the intent intent is really important. If the intent is to
34:59
make people laugh and feel good and like have a good time, that's different
35:02
than if the intent is malicious. You see these like comedy specials that only
35:07
air on fucking Fox News or whatever that are like my pronouns are USA,
35:14
I'm like, okay, fuck you, like whatever man, or like gen
35:20
Z doesn't even know how to mail and envelope. Gen Z can't even write
35:24
in a checkbook. And then people will take that video and then put it
35:28
on TikTok and then they'll like split it with like you know, me in
35:32
the office needing to help my fucking company CEO create a PDF or like save
35:38
to pdf, like I don't know. If the intent is malicious, then
35:42
like that's an issue. If there's people who want things to be like comedians,
35:47
specifically, people who are like their craft like to be humorous, to
35:52
make people laugh, to make people happy, I think I see your point
35:54
on that. They also think it's funny when you mentioned like society says like
36:00
there are things that like are two taboo and should not be humorized. Society
36:04
says that, But TikTok and Twitter like like nothing is off limits. Man,
36:07
Like they're making fun of everything. And I think that's probably the way
36:14
things are headed, or have been headed, or probably have been in that
36:16
direction for a long time. Yeah, and that's maybe one of the reasons
36:20
why TikTok is so popular. It's because it does give people a platform to
36:24
almost vote democratically with like, Okay, what has good intention and what really
36:29
is funny, so we don't just have to take whatever humor. Like he
36:34
made a great point, the intention is so important. Were me and my
36:37
wife turned on a comedian the other day and like half of her jokes were
36:40
just complaining about how young people complain and they don't work hard. And I
36:45
was just like, this isn't funny. It's just her complaining about the younger
36:50
generation. And it was like, Oh, this girl at targets is needed
36:54
her break after her four hour shifts. It's just like, what do you
37:00
doing. You're putting down an entire young joke. You don't know what that
37:04
girl's going through. So yeah, I feel man if there's like no effort
37:07
into it, if there's no effort to like set a scene or anything like.
37:13
And you know what. This goes into our next question, where it
37:15
says like humor is classified as a mature defense mechanism. Can you think of
37:20
examples of unhealthy ways people use humor? I think exactly that when there's like
37:23
zero effort and you're just putting people down and you're just like getting the low
37:28
hanging fruit, Like that's like shitty, Like that doesn't feel good. I
37:32
feel like I saw a TikTok recently and I'm gonna completely butcher the joke.
37:37
But there's a there's a comedian who was talking about she's a comedian of color,
37:42
and she was talking about how she had gone on a date with another
37:45
woman and they had gone back to a house and did adult things, and
37:51
at one point they she was saying how the person that she hooked up with
37:54
was a black lesbian cop. And then she's like she's made a joke of
38:00
something like oh like, uh, you know, blue lives don't matter now
38:05
or something or like something along those lines. And I was like, she's
38:07
like, you know, if you really think about it, if I'm going
38:09
to hook up with a cop at least as a black lesbian, Like that's
38:12
got to be the best one, right, Like stuff like that is funny.
38:15
But then to do the stuff where you're just complaining about young people or
38:19
you're just like acting old. And again, the one that gets me every
38:22
time the my pronouns are kiss my ass, like fuck you, Ted Cruise,
38:27
like who suck man? Since we've gone after Ted Cruise, it has.
38:34
But I saw this recently where yeah, the most like the lamest no
38:39
effort jokes, that's those tend to have some malicious intent, just wanted to
38:45
just wanted to hurt people and put people down. And yeah, along those
38:49
lines of unhealthy ways people use humor, I have had some patients that they
38:54
use humor excessively and they use it to deflect and dodge from the question.
39:00
So it's like, oh, like are you depressed or who's not depressed?
39:04
These Yeah all right, yeah, going in for high fives, yeah the
39:14
guy, But I think we gotta answer the question, yeah, are you
39:17
depressed? Yeah? And so that is the thing too, where yes,
39:22
it is classified as a mature defense mechanism, but I've also seen people use
39:25
it in immature unhealthy ways too. So yeah, yeah, it's tricky.
39:30
Well, I've had a lot of laughs today. I think we usually do
39:32
have laughs. I will say this is one funny thing. When I'm working
39:36
on the videos to upload to like YouTube, YouTube will do a thing where
39:39
it picks its own thumbnails, like it'll it'll like give you some options to
39:45
use, and it's kind of fucked up. But I always think it's funny
39:49
that every time we do it an episode, it'll like come up with the
39:52
thumbnails and usually the thumbnails are you and I laughing or smiling, and then
39:57
it'll be like, then the title of the episode will be like blame capitalism
40:00
for drug you and it's just made you with like the biggest smiles fruence there,
40:09
Yeah, understanding and incongruity with that. Thank you all as always for
40:19
listening. Thank you Mike for the suggestion. Just thank you everybody. Justin
40:22
I missed you, my friend. Let me remind everybody where you can find
40:28
us Apple Podcast, Spotify, apparently not Stitcher anymore, that that that was
40:32
a podcast streaming service that I guess is closing down. But everywhere else you
40:37
can find our podcast. We are a member of the Speaker Prime Network.
40:40
Thank you, iHeartMedia, iHeart Radio Speaker for having us. If you use
40:46
Apple Podcasts, please feel free to leave us a five star review in a
40:50
comment if you would like. On Spotify, we'd love to see a five
40:52
star review from you all. You can find us on social media at Millennial
40:57
MC on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. Won't even mention threads anymore
41:02
because that ship is dead. But with all that, go laugh a little
41:07
bit, Go have some fun, Go find some humor in your life,
41:10
and take care of your mentals.