If you wanna speak critically about comedy, there's a phrase that's worth retiring from your vernacular. Ahem: "Humor is subjective." It is totally useless and even misrepresentative.
In practical terms, this "argument" is used to justify lazy humor since "someone will find it funny." Taken to its logical extreme, "humor is subjective" means literally everything is funny. As long as one person laughs, it's equally as funny as a genuinely good joke.
Of course, the means the opposite is also true - if everything is funny, then... actually nothing is. The phrase reduces itself to meaninglessness. In fact, there are demonstrably "better versions" of jokes.
I'll steal an example from @YahtzeeCroshaw who wrote about Ctrl-Alt-Del conceptart.org/forums/showthr… - if you want to see the original CAD comic being referred to, it's here - cad-comic.com/comic/puzzled-… - but the short of it...
This is Ctrl-Alt-Del's parody comic of Puzzle Quest: cad-comic.com/comic/puzzled-…
This is Penny Arcade's - penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/…
Penny Arcade's is funnier. It's worth examining why, how timing and delivery takes the same punchline and makes it flow well.
This is Penny Arcade's - penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/…
Penny Arcade's is funnier. It's worth examining why, how timing and delivery takes the same punchline and makes it flow well.
"Humor is subjective" negates all critical value. It says these jokes are equal because someone surely likes the worse one better. That's crap. You'll find people who prefer duck turds to caviar, it doesn't mean you can't study cuisine.
