As I have a minor academic expertise in comedy (laugh it up), thought it’d be good to theorise why offense is more common today than it used to be. Thread ahead, academic comedy fans. (will focus on UK comedy as that’s more my area but can be applied widely).
There are 3 main theories on why we laugh. The theories of comedy relevant to this are Superiority & Relief theory. Bigoted comedy, like this racist ‘joke’ above, use to get laughs because of the superiority theory, but over time has shifted to Relief.
First, defining theories.
