Humor is mostly a matter of personal taste, but on more than one occasion science has tried to study its effects and scope from a general standpoint. In 2002, researcher and psychologist Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire created a website where visitors could share and rate jokes. The results of his study were grouped under the term “The funniest joke in the world,” and according to most visitors, it involves two guys in a forest…
Personally, I'm not someone who laughs easily, or perhaps I've become too old and one of the things I lost along the way is my sense of humor. At the same time, there are always things on the Web that take me by surprise, and I imagine many of our readers experience something similar. The creativity or subtlety of some memes can definitely steal a laugh, but what about “traditional” jokes, so to speak? To explore the answer, I'm going to share a translation of what is (supposedly) the funniest joke in the world:
Two hunters are in the forest, and one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing, and his eyes have gone white. The other guy takes out his phone, calls emergency services, and says: “My friend is dead! What can I do?!” The operator responds: “Calm down, I can help you. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, and suddenly a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: “Okay, now what?!”
The first time I heard it was in 2002, when more than 100,000 people around the world chose it as the winner (out of an average of 40,000 jokes available) of the LaughLab experiment, developed by psychologist Richard Wiseman. To tell the truth, the joke isn't very original, to say the least. Its structure is based on an old sketch from the British program The Goon Show, with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Secombe. The most important difference is that both people are in a house and not in the forest, but the rest is almost identical.
The winning joke was published by Gurpal Gosall, a psychiatrist from Manchester. Wiseman highlighted that the joke “works” in a large number of countries, appeals to men, women, children, and adults alike, and has a much more “universal” profile, if you will, despite other jokes scoring higher with certain groups. Now the question is: What do you think?
