A transcript of Episode 300 of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by Delia Chiaro to discuss what a joke is, how humour can be powerful, and whether it can be safe to be humourous in our digital products..
This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Anika Huq.
Transcript
Evgenia Grinblo
Hi, I’m Evgenia Grinblo from episodes 138 and 139. And my joke is, when does a joke become a dad joke? When it becomes a parent.
Computer voice
UX Podcast episode 300.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson
You’re listening to UX Podcast coming to you from Stockholm, Sweden.
Per Axbom
Helping the UX community explore ideas and share knowledge for 300 episodes.
James Royal-Lawson
We are your hosts, James Royal-Lawson.
Per Axbom
And Per Axbom.
James Royal-Lawson
With listeners in countries and territories all over the world from Great Britain to Tanzania.
Per Axbom
And we couldn’t do the country you wanted James, I know you wanted to do Liberia…
James Royal-Lawson
I did. And you know, sometimes these country choices at the beginning, we have actually put thought into it, and there is like an underlying secret theme of why they’re there. But they’re always countries that we have found in the stats. And I wanted to do Great Britain to Liberia.
Per Axbom
Yeah, because I am born in Liberia.
James Royal-Lawson
And I’m born in Great Britain.
Per Axbom
But the stats show we haven’t had any listeners in Liberia across this time span of eleven and a half years. And I had to just look at it shortly and it turns out the internet penetration in Liberia is about 19%. But not only that, the 20% of the lowest earners in Liberia, they have to pay about 50% of their monthly salary for one gigabyte of data. So you start to understand why it’s it’s you don’t have a lot of internet users there.
James Royal-Lawson
And if you do look at the countries that we’re missing from the list of countries where we’ve had listeners, and there aren’t a huge number of them, it’s unfortunately a cluster of countries in Central Africa.
Per Axbom
Yep. And that would be interesting in itself to actually explore some more about what that means for them as a society and community.
James Royal-Lawson
Today, though, for our episode 300…
Per Axbom
300!
James Royal-Lawson
300! We are going to get all humorous.
Per Axbom
Yep. Back at some point, I know you know which episode we started having jokes on the show. And Jenny, who did the first…
James Royal-Lawson
Episode 138.
Per Axbom
Right. And Jenny, who did the joke at the beginning, at the top of this episode, she was the one who actually asked us, “Well, shouldn’t you do jokes at the end of your shows?” And we started doing them. And we haven’t stopped.
James Royal-Lawson
And the reason why we started doing them was not just because that Jenny suggested we did was because we’ve been joking, and well complaining I guess, about the dead zone that is the end of a podcast episode. People don’t listen to the end. As soon as you start saying, “Well, you know, recommended listening or you have your catchphrase…” Something triggers people at the end to go, “Ah, next episode.”
Per Axbom
But and now we’ve learned that a lot of people, hey I don’t know how many, but a lot of people it seems because they actually get back to us, which means that there is an impact, they do listen, and they comment on the fact that we do have episodes with jokes. Probably because they listened to several and then you have to listen through to the next one you hear the joke, of course.
James Royal-Lawson
You mean you’re saying it’s all down to autoplay, not down to the jokes?
Per Axbom
I think so. Because they’re not high quality jokes. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s some of the worst jokes ever that we do at the end of the shows. Dad jokes.
James Royal-Lawson
They are terrible. Dad jokes. Yes. Or yeah. So I thought we started off with knock knock jokes.
Per Axbom
Yes, we Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
But what was the first joke? It wasn’t a knock knock joke?
Per Axbom
The first joke was a knock knock joke. Yes. I can do it for you. Knock knock.
James Royal-Lawson
Who’s there?
Per Axbom
A really bad visual designer.
James Royal-Lawson
A really bad visual designer who?
Per Axbom
Listen, do we really need the Knock? Knock? Can we move ‘Line 2’ three pixels to the right. And I thought we agreed on Helvetica! This is Arial.
James Royal-Lawson
It’s really terrible, that one.
Per Axbom
That was that was a really bad joke. I don’t know who would understand that joke even.
James Royal-Lawson
Well, who would understand it? And then who would actually laugh at it?
Per Axbom
[Laughter] I’m laughing at it now…
James Royal-Lawson
No, no!
Per Axbom
For all the wrong reasons, of course. And that’s okay, too.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. But today though, we are going to bring you a few jokes. We’re also going to bring you an interview. Delia Chiaro is a professor in the translation and interpretation department at the University of Bologna in Italy.
Per Axbom
Yeah. Yeah, you found her online when we realised we wanted to do something about humour and jokes. And her main research interests are audio visual translation and humour and intercultural communication, which is interesting, given the fact that we are such an international show.
James Royal-Lawson
And she’s also… she’s written books about humour, and quite recently, even a book about humour in the digital age.
Per Axbom
Yes, exactly. And I think we wanted to do this because it’s episode 300. And we wanted to do something different. But as we are talking to Delia, I think we also realized – this has a lot to do with UX and design and communication. Doesn’t it all?
James Royal-Lawson
I think we’re going to start with the big question. And that is, what, well, what is a joke? We’ve been…Per and I were discussing this a bit beforehand and we realised that all the other questions we had kind of seemed to boil down to that we needed to define, or at least explain what a joke is, to be able to move on to some of the other questions.
Delia Chiaro
And it’s a very, very good question. A joke is a linguistic trope, the aim of which is to amuse, and there are different categories of jokes. But jokes are independent entities. Verbally express humour is a larger entity, in which you find the joke, because jokes are not the only way to be funny verbally. You’ve got asides, you’ve got quips, within conversation – in banter. The concept of banter is not couched within the joke form. And I think today we’re witnessing the demise of the joke. Because people don’t tell jokes anymore. When was the last time somebody told you a joke? If you think about it, when was the last time somebody actually told you a joke? It’s much more likely that something came in on your mobile device.
And you saw, for example, a meme or you saw a Tiktok reel, it’s unlikely that somebody’s told you a joke. And even stand up comedians don’t tell jokes anymore. The days of Tommy Trinder or um, Tommy Cooper, pardon, are gone. Stand up comedians don’t tell jokes; they tell stories with quips within them, rather than “How many women does it take…how many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?” So I would argue that the last jokes we really saw probably in the 1990s. But I have absolutely no proof of that whatsoever. Because, I don’t know…1990s, the 2000s… After 911, for example, jokes were still being told, and that was probably the disaster jokes. After any disaster, you’re gonna get a bunch of jokes. The Queen died recently, and there was a bunch of jokes coming up. But they weren’t jokes were they? They were memes rather than jokes. But with 911, there were some jokes, but I do remember sitting at my computer and helping Christie Davies, who’s no longer with us, but the master of the history of jokes. And he wasn’t good at computers being of certain age. And I remember sitting at the computer, and he said, “Delia tell me when the first 911 joke comes in on the internet.” And I did.
Mike White
Hey, it’s Mike White from Michigan. I’m a regular publishing volunteer. And I’ve got a cheesy joke for ya. What’s the best type of cheese for luring a bear out of a tree? Come on, Bear.
James Royal-Lawson
We finished every single podcast off with a joke and we have done since September 2016. And we’ve been talking about well what makes these bad jokes at the end of the show popular? Because we do get feedback that they’re really good and really fun. So in part I think you might have answered that or give some…. shed some light on it and that it’s a scarcity. So the fact that we do say, I guess traditional jokes if I mean now I’m kind of defining something as traditional without even really knowing what I mean by that, but we started off by doing knock knock jokes. Yeah. Which I guess a traditional joke format. And you know, we’ve done, we’ve now done, what is 138 was the episode number that we did our first joke, and we’re now on episode 300. So you can do the maths and work out we’ve done quite a few bad jokes dad jokes, puns. And I wonder, do we…what…for our audience…why do they find that so it kind of amusing or comforting or a thing that they like, or want us to keep at the end of the show?
Delia Chiaro
Certainly comforting is a great word, and you’re right that there are dozens of categories of jokes: the knock knock joke, the riddle, the pun and remember that puns are not necessarily funny though. They can be, but they’re certainly clever. Puns are like detective novels, aren’t they? You have to kind of work them out. There’s some puns that are not funny, but you do have that kind of sensation of, “Aren’t I clever I’ve worked it out.” They’re certainly comforting, and something that I left out before your last question… if you go on to the internet, there are millions of hits for joke collections. There are millions of hits. Hundreds, you know, lots of zeros. And you have collection of jokes online. So jokes do exist. But whether we tell them or not.
So I think maybe what you said there about comfort while you might have something there. And of course, of course you want to be comforted. It’s a bit like a warm cup of tea, or especially when the joke is what I think you call them dad jokes. Dad jokes are the ones which are supposedly safe; they’re not gonna offend anybody. They do that, “ugh” kind of sensation. But that “ugh” sensation that you know that somebody else is having at the same time of us quite comforting. Yeah it’s comforting. Because remember that we always…that laughter…laughter is connected to humour, but it’s a different area, if you like, but when you say laughter you immediately think of the word humour, right? Humour and laughter are connected. And when somebody tells me a joke, I don’t necessarily laugh. It doesn’t mean to say that I didn’t like the joke, okay. And that happens to all of us. But appreciating the joke. We laugh, we laugh together, we laugh with other people. Laugh is part of our comedy. It’s social. Imagine you walk into a room and everybody’s laughing and you’re not laughing. You immediately want to know what they’re laughing about, don’t you?
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah.
Delia Chiaro
Because you want to laugh with them. Now. This is why…
James Royal-Lawson
And also hope that they’re not laughing at you.
Delia Chiaro
Now, that’s a good point. Because there are a whole bunch of people, gelotophobes, for example. Gelotophobes, that comes from the Greek ‘Gelos’ or ‘laughter’ Nothing to do with ice cream gelato. It’s a “ge.”
Per Axbom
[Laughter]
James Royal-Lawson
[Laughter]
Delia Chiaro
Thank you. I’ll get my coat. Gelotophobes, they have a fear of laughing and they think people are laughing at them all the time. That’s very interesting. There’s a lot of research on this, and I would be very, very happy after to send you a bibliography on gelotophobia. Because there are certain places where there are more galotophobes than others.
James Royal-Lawson
Oh right so across the world it’s not evenly distributed that condition?
Delia Chiaro
No. Obviously, it’s a question of state and trait. There are people everywhere. We don’t want to get essentialist about this, but there are people everywhere, where there may be a gelotophobe here in my town or anywhere, but research shows that there are certain countries where there are more gelotophobes than others. It’s not a very nice condition, you know it’s a neurodivergent condition.
Per Axbom
And it’s extremely important to be aware of that that exists, of course, as well then.
Alastair Somerville
This is Alastair Somerville. Congratulations on your 300th episode. I was glad to appear on episode 105 and 175. In terms of a joke rather than a dad joke. My family quite likes toddler jokes. So here’s the one we like most. Why was the polar bear sad? Because his name was bench. Anyway, thanks a lot. Bye.
Per Axbom
I want to circle back to the dad jokes, because what you said that there was that they’re not very offensive and they’re corny and people just go “ugh” and groan. But I don’t think our listeners really appreciate and understand how much effort and time we put into selecting jokes that work because sometimes we figure out, “Oh, it’s your time to do the joke.” And you go online and you’re trying to find a joke. And I hear James. “No, I can’t do that one. No, I can’t do that one.” And realize…Why? Why do we keep feeling that we can’t do certain jokes?
Per Axbom
And that’s, and that’s just…when I say that “We can’t do that one.” They’re the ones that aren’t marked as like over 18 censored because some of these places where you find the jokes, they do actually mask them so you can’t even see them until you’ve clicked on something to reveal because they’ve considered to be so offensive that it isn’t able to be visible at first.
Per Axbom
Exactly.
James Royal-Lawson
Those ones I don’t even try, but there’s always…we always have to go through a filtering process, I guess, to assess and judge a joke.
Delia Chiaro
Absolutely, absolutely. I don’t know whether you’re gonna have to edit this out. But there was a website once upon a time called Sickipedia. And for, and this website, only contained jokes that were that were taboo. And, as I was working on rape jokes at the time I needed some rape jokes, obviously, it’s the kind of joke that would be that would be censored on the internet because of the algorithms and so on. And so I looked it up on sickipedia, I couldn’t find it. But I found the book, what they had done, they had downloaded, they had made a book out of it, and it was available on Amazon. I bought the book and then…it was a PDF file, basically, it wasn’t a book, it was a PDF file full of jokes. But, the site is back or at least it was back last time I looked at a couple of years ago during the lockdown. What’s interesting about the site, and the jokes are extremely shocking. I mean, I can understand I can understand why it was blocked out. What’s interesting about the site, are the hundreds of people that do like it, and put likes because you know, you’re able to judge the joke. So what I’m trying to say is that these jokes that are being censored, we can sensor all we like or they or whoever it is that sensors all we like but there are always going to be some people who are going to go for this kind of joke and they’re always going to be available somewhere and not even on the dark web but on the surface of the web such as sickipedia.
Delia Chiaro
So what we say there is that the humour…humour always exists.
Delia Chiaro
It does!
James Royal-Lawson
It just sometimes finds a room.
Delia Chiaro
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, the dark web. I had a student looking at alt-right humour. Because you may, as you may know, that the left is kind of quite bad at humour. But the right seems to be better at humour. So we decided to investigate this and he went onto the dark web and downloaded stuff which even shocked me, and I thought I was pretty unshockable. It was absolutely horrid. So yeah, yeah, that’s a good metaphor, very good metaphor, James. Yeah, it finds a room. And then remember that I was talking about disaster jokes at the beginning…Every single disaster is going to is going to generate jokes. Initially…911 is quite a recent one. Yes, the most recent one, or the queen dying – was not a disaster, but something very sad – or Lady Diana, for example. Princess Diana. Immediately afterwards, people used to start telling jokes and you’d have these they’re known as joke cycles. Which if you take a joke cycle from the 1950s – we’re not going to understand it today.
Per Axbom
But it becomes a coping mechanism then really, it’s so it’s not only about laugh. Well, it is about laughing then but the purpose of the joke becomes something different. I’m thinking now also about the war in Ukraine and the tractors pulling tanks, the memes about that. So you’re laughing about it at the same time as something extremely serious is going on.
Delia Chiaro
Yeah. Oh yeah, but yeah. But again, what’s really fascinating is that these jokes or memes or whatever they are, they are created by the people, for the people. Unlike satire, where you got somebody, you’ve got some famous guy on TV or woman on TV, doing satire that has been written by script writers and prepared for her, prepared for them. It’s extremely sophisticated. Yet at the other extreme, you’ve got people, young people manipulating means and making tank means with the zed on and joking about the zed or… And I saw a brilliant one recently, I thought it was absolutely brilliant, and it was Putin on a cracker and it said Putin on the ritz.
Per Axbom
Yeah. I love that one.
Delia Chiaro
I love it, it’s so innocent, a ritz cracker and he’s on it, and citing “Puttin on the Ritz”
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah “Puttin’ on the Ritz” the song as well.
Delia Chiaro
Yeah, it’s clever. It’s actually quite innocent in a sense. I know that Putin is the bad guy, but it’s also quite innocent. It’s not even really punching down on him at all. It’s about the pun.
Per Axbom
But it’s interesting that you’re saying about jokes are dying, and we have more memes. But we also have this new technology popping up like smart speakers. And I know you mentioned before to us about children always asking the smart speakers tell me a joke. Yeah. So somebody’s preparing jokes still.
Delia Chiaro
Yeah, the smart speaker. Yeah, Alexa. Yeah, children will tend to…in this research that we’ve studied that we’re carrying out at the moment. Children will say things like, Alexa, please fart and Alexa farts and farting is something that makes children – that makes adults laugh as well – for some reason farting is funny. And, yes, they will try and make the…rather than… not so much a joke, but they will certainly try and make the machine laugh. And the machine will…
James Royal-Lawson
Oh they’re trying to.. So rather than try and get the machine to make them laugh, they’re trying to make the machine laugh.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, although they will say things like, “Make us laugh.” They won’t say, “Tell us a joke.” But they’ll say things like “make me laugh” or “Say something funny” Or, well, that’s what we find…They don’t say, “tell us a joke.” But they’ll say things like, “Oh, make us laugh Alexa.” I’m scared I’m saying ‘Alexa’ it’s gonna come on all over the house. [Laughter]
James Royal-Lawson
People’s speakers everywhere across the world are gonna come on who are listening to this episode.
Delia Chiaro
Yeah. Which brings me back to walking into a pub and everybody’s laughing, and we want to laugh because we want to be part of that. And what you just asked me about that the Alexa and the children – again, the children have understood this – they know that if you laugh, you’re going to be in a group with people, and that’s what we want. And it was interesting when James said, “Well, you might think they’re laughing at you.” And that’s really interesting because we do think that even if you’re not a gelotophobe. I think everybody has had the sensation of “maybe they’re laughing at me, maybe I said something wrong. Maybe I’ve got something on my nose or something.” And at the same time, this thing about laughing together, it’s what politicians have definitely honed in on. Definitely, definitely. I would start more or less with Berlusconi. He realised that if he was funny, how can you not like somebody who makes you laugh?
Amy Bucher
Hi, this is Amy Buker from Episode 232. I was previously the vice president of behaviour change design at Mad*Pow. And now I’m the chief behavioural officer at Lirio. And I really enjoyed my conversation with James and Per about behavioural design on UX podcast, and I’m so thrilled to celebrate your 300th episode. So here’s my dad joke. What is the difference between snow men and snow women? snow balls.
Per Axbom
So I’m with a group of friends and someone tells a joke and I find it strictly not funny at all. But the rest of the group of friends laugh, and I feel like I should probably be laughing to still be part of the group. So there’s, there’s a lot of psychology going on there where I made a decision where I have to decide, “Do I continue with this? Do I speak up? What do I…What’s the policy here? For me to continue being a part of this group of friends?” Maybe if it keeps going… I don’t… There’s so much that jokes do that they can actually exclude. Rather than include as well.
Delia Chiaro
Certainly, if you look at the internet, if you look at Twitter, for example, I’m sure I’m not the only one to have this sensation. You see people in a thread, and they’re obviously laughing at something, and you’re trying to work out what the hell they’re laughing at. And you don’t get it. I don’t get it. Why don’t you get it? It’s because it’s a group, and they’re talking to each other.
Per Axbom
It’s tribal.
Delia Chiaro
Absolutely. It’s tribal, is totally tribal. And going back to the alt-right. There are so many different verbal and also multimodal signals that they send out to each other, so that you know that that communication is aimed at other people in that group. Peppa Pig, that’s a very basic one. That’s an easy one. But there are others, emojis, which connote the group. But the moment you’re using an emoji or the moment you’re using peppa pig or a cartoon character, you’re in the realm of complicity, aren’t you? I would argue, why do a cartoon when you could have you could have put in a photograph? The minute you stylize something in that way, you’re entering a different realm of comic discourse, or humorous discourse. Or, or rather, I’m pretending that I’m only joking, but I’m saying something serious.
Delia Chiaro
So this all feels like an absolute minefield.
Delia Chiaro
It is. [Laughter]
Per Axbom
So I know that we talked about a lot about tonality on websites. And, and sometimes we thought, well, we should put in humour into our websites to make them more personal to make them more attractive, because then people understand that we are a fun group of people. But adding humour, of course, that means that you will necessarily be excluding people, should we be using humour more? Or should be we’d be more weary? How should we cope with this? How do we decide when to and when to and when not to use humour in our digital interfaces as well?
Delia Chiaro
Oh, my goodness. I have not really thought about this. But it seems to me that it’s as though humour is the default position on social media for some reason. There’s a study carried out in Jerusalem, and they found that they were looking at what people were using the web to do. And they found Lolcats, were very high up in cats. For some reason, cats were everywhere. At the time, they were the Lolcats as well, the Lolcats were the first memes, if you probably remember, about 10 years ago, or so. And obviously porn, obviously. But then after the Lolcats, and the porn, and you could argue that Lolcats are funny. What that Lolcats, funny. It was humour, a huge amount of humour on the internet. So it shouldn’t surprise us that politics and Ukrainians and whoever are using humour, because humour brings us together. It’s obviously a cognitive process, but it’s also a social approach. It’s something social, and it’s also something emotional all in one.
Per Axbom
But it also becomes a Get Out of Jail Free card, because people can say, can be really offensive and say, but I was just joking
Delia Chiaro
Exactly. “I was only joking. I didn’t mean it.” Absolutely.
James Royal-Lawson
But that’s something you can do when we’re having a conversation like this. But if you’re trying to make your brand or your your product, digital product, your app, humorous, your app can’t suddenly then just go, “Oh, we’re only joking.” After they’ve somehow sense that that joke didn’t go down.
Delia Chiaro
Well, no, probably. Yeah. Maybe you could, maybe there’s an algorithm that can do that.
Per Axbom
Depends on who your target group is.
Delia Chiaro
Yeah.
Per Axbom
And even talking about people from other countries, but I remember as a kid, it was, I mean, between Sweden and Norway, you always told jokes about Norwegians because you wanted to feel superior to our neighbouring country because we were so much alike so that so being that much alike actually gave you an excuse for being able to tell these jokes.
James Royal-Lawson
And we had the same thing in the UK you had the the Irishman Englishman Scotsman Welshman, you had all the regions or the countries nearby that you would build into jokes.
Delia Chiaro
Well, yeah, there’s there is an underdog. Everybody’s got an underdog, so.
James Royal-Lawson
And it’s offensive, and it’s always offensive, I guess.
Delia Chiaro
Of course, yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
By its pure definition, it’s offensive. You’re making fun of another tribe.
Delia Chiaro
Absolutely.
Ben Sauer
Hello everyone. This is Ben Sauer you may remember me from Episode 98 and 207. Here to deliver you a joke and make you groan all at the same time. A UX designer was visiting the local market one day, only to find that, unbeknownst to them, their mother had picked luscious fruit from the designer’s garden and was unashamedly selling it as though it was her own. The designer loudly exclaimed, “Why are you selling my fig, Ma?”
Per Axbom
So is there anything like universal humour? Is there anything that every body finds funny?
Delia Chiaro
Well, there should be… there should be within universal humour. The underdog is something that everybody should find funny is recognised so the underdog definitely. Although you’re going to change the underdog if you see what I mean, wherever you go. So the underdog is one of them. Another one is sex of course. We all laugh at sex, but in different ways.
James Royal-Lawson
And, and farts, like you said. Globally, the funny thing.
Delia Chiaro
I’m not sure I don’t want to get out… I’m saying I’m not sure here. I’m raising my hands as I say this. I believe farts are not funny in Japan. I mean, if somebody Japanese is listening, they might be able to correct me, because I don’t think they find poop funny, whereas poop is funny in many cultures well it’s not always funny. But it is in many cultures, but I believe not in Japan because the what’s it called the emoticon? The emoji you know, the one… The poop emoji? Do you know the one? Now that was invented in Japan, and it wasn’t meant to be, “Ugh” you know. So I think it wasn’t meant to be funny or yucky in any way. So I’m careful what I said about shit in Japan. But the other thing about poop. And the other thing is that how we have transferred the concept of excreta onto our politicians. So if you look at cartoons, recent cartoons, you’ll find people like Donald Trump in a diaper. In a dirty diaper. I’m thinking of Martin Rowson. He will often depict the UK the English Channel with floating turds. It sounds really serious, but it’s it’s very dark humour. Well, obviously, it’s brown humour. I wrote an article on this. I called it brown humour. But we’re transferring poop, the concept of shit onto our politicians and parties.
Per Axbom
Right, but trying to do it in a clever way.
Delia Chiaro
In a clever way, of course. Yes, absolutely. There was. I don’t know… What’s his name in the UK… Guardian…Steve Bell! He would always depict Trump with a golden lavatory seat on his head in place with his hair. At Nigel Farage again, I think. I’m trying to think, I think it’s Steve Bell again, would always have Farage being excreted from Mr. Trump’s derriere in his cartoons.
Per Axbom
So I can hear my listeners or our listeners going several times along the show, “Well, but that’s not humour. That’s not funny. That’s not a joke.” But by definition, you’re saying it is a joke?
Delia Chiaro
Of course it’s a joke. I mean, whether you find it funny or not is different. You might not find it funny. But that does not delegitimize the humour in that cartoon. You recognise that as an attempt to amuse. It’s going to be very offensive to Mr. Trump and Mr. Farage, and it’s going to be offensive to conservatives and Republicans, I understand that. But that doesn’t mean you can do delegitimise it as a joke any more than I can delegitimise the way when the Capitol was taken on January 6th last year, that the guy who put on a look like Big Chief, I don’t know who, an Indian chief… Amerindian chief, there was no way that I could take him seriously. I mean, he was he was being, in his own way. He was trying to be funny whether I find it funny or not depends on a whole bunch of variables in my psyche. But that doesn’t mean to say that he wasn’t trying to be funny. Of course, he was trying to be funny. In a carnivalesque way, of course, because taking up the capital was, you know…
James Royal-Lawson
It becomes surreal.
Delia Chiaro
It was surreal but it was also the classic bakhtinian carnival. It was that the people are becoming, otrying to take control. And that’s what happens in the carnival. You know, you put a donkeys head on, you know, and the jester becomes the king for a day. And that was what was happening here. And when I saw the guy with the feathers on I thought, this is the carnival. And obviously, it was something very serious going on. I didn’t. I personally didn’t find it funny, but I recognise the carnival in that. So it’s not a question of whether you find it funny or not. It’s still a joke. You can’t do delegitimise it because you don’t like it.
Christopher Noessel
Hey, UX podcast, Chris Noessel, from Episode 25, 86, 121, 136, 216, 217 and 276. The dad joke I’d like to contribute goes like this. What does a couch say? Moooj. That one’s homegrown. Congratulations on your 300th episode.
James Royal-Lawson
You’ve spent many many years researching and mentioned…
Delia Chiaro
40, I’m so old, yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
40, and you mentioned at the beginning of our chat your research into into rape jokes which must have been must have been really tough to go through. So how, how, do you find anything funny anymore? I mean, do you become completely devoid?
Delia Chiaro
[Laughter] Yeah, I kind of found that question funny.
James Royal-Lawson
[Laughter] You’ve answered it by laughing.
Delia Chiaro
I don’t find…I’m appalled by rape jokes. But I recognise the fact that they exist means that there are people that find them funny. So it’s kind of Sisyphean, isn’t it? They’re there. And in our research, we found that people, some people found them funny, yet they’d cover their mouths, so they knew that they shouldn’t be finding them funny.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, they’re up- Basically, their upbringing. Society taught them that you shouldn’t laugh at certain things. But they were laughing anyway, just signalling that they knew it was wrong.
Per Axbom
Honestly, I think we could go on for hours talking about this. The more we talked, the more I realized I want to explore different pathways around humour. And I hope our listeners are excited to learn more about this and be more careful, but also be more brave and trying things out and learning what how people react to different things. And it’s always about exploring and experimenting, and, of course, in our industry, so and exploring your research as well. That’d be fantastic. And really, really, I hope we get to bring you on the show again in the future.
Delia Chiaro
Oh, I’d love to. Thank you. Thank you so much. I kind of feel apologetic, because it’s been so serious. I was expecting to be laughing all the way through it. And I got very serious. That’s my fault. But I think it’s because humour is serious.
Per Axbom
Because humor feel so innocent, but then you realize it’s so so powerful.
Delia Chiaro
Absolutely. But do remember humour is a thermometer rather than a thermostat. It takes the temperature of a society rather than changes a society.
Per Axbom
Thank you so much, Delia.
Delia Chiaro
Thank you very much for having me.
James Royal-Lawson
I’ve been thinking a fair bit this last couple of days since we talked to Delia about inclusive design and what that means to us as digital designers. And what that means in connection to humour, jokes. And I’ve been…to be honest, I’ve actually been struggling to come to terms of any design situation where we can be fully inclusive while being humorous.
Per Axbom
Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, because we covered so much area around how it’s risky, how they can be offensive, how they can cause disparagement, there are cultural clashes.
James Royal-Lawson
Neurodiversity.
Per Axbom
Which means that there are so many sensitive areas where things can go wrong, which means that if you’re going to do it, if you’re going to use humour, it needs to be in an environment where you have trust, and you know who you’re talking to. And they already have confidence that you are who you say you are, and you have these values and they understand your values. So that joke perhaps has a strong foundation. Depending on of course, I’m thinking sometimes, are there words puns that always work? I’m not sure…
Per Axbom
Well, I mean, we kind of got into that a little bit about universal humour. I mean, it’s, we’re coming from from an English speaking perspective, Per. I mean, can we really say that this joke in English is going to be universally understood and universally accepted?
Per Axbom
Universally? Absolutely not, no.
James Royal-Lawson
No because we’re presuming a certain understanding of English. No, I think it’s difficult. I think it’s almost a bit sad that I’ve come to the conclusion that to be fully inclusive in design, you can’t use any humour in your design.
Per Axbom
Well unless the humour perhaps is at your own expense, about yourself, inwards, or if you use the help of your community, of your users, stakeholders if you use their own words, and allow them to be the humorous ones, and power empowering them to be the owners of that humour, then perhaps that would work as well. But it’s really, really difficult to to, to know ahead of time or understand where people are coming from, to feel confident enough to use humour that will have the impact that you want it to have.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, you mentioned it Per. It’s trust, but also, it’s relationship building, you’ve got to have, you’ve got to have climbed into the room together.
Per Axbom
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
Because then you’re in a shared space with a shared experience and you both feel safe.
Per Axbom
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
And you both feel safe with a certain type of humour or you’re confident that certain type of humour will work. So then on your public facing web page or app that is risky then because you’re, you know, whenever your shopfront is facing out to the world, the public at large. You gonna have, oh, you’re gonna be taking a bit of a risk with humour,
Per Axbom
Right, and even if you do it, like in a closed space, in this day and age of the internet, I mean, you don’t know how it will be taken out of context anyway. I mean, wherever you say it, wherever you tell a joke. It might be used for nefarious purposes to twist and turn your words in other ways. So it’s a difficult thing to actually cope with. And I’m realising as you’re saying, isn’t that a bit sad? That’s that humour is so difficult. There should be an easier answer.
James Royal-Lawson
But do you know what though, Per, when you said, “Do it in a closed space.”
Per Axbom
I heard you laughing, yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
I started, I started thinking about fart jokes.
Per Axbom
Yeah, that. We’ve touched upon that, didn’t we that kids asked the devices to fart. I mean, that’s. Yeah, maybe.
James Royal-Lawson
So maybe that’s it. I mean, you’re safe. So long as you keep your your digital humour to fart related jokes.
Per Axbom
I’m pretty sure a lot of people would abandon websites that do fart jokes. Yes. That’s not your go to solution. I would not say. [Laughter]
James Royal-Lawson
Click, click this button! But you remember the thing where you, was it… “Pull my finger.”
Per Axbom
So familiar, but I can’t remember what it was. I remember doing it, but I can’t remember what it was.
James Royal-Lawson
Oh, he’s one of the schools child things where you can have someone would you put your finger and you said, “Pull my finger, pull my finger” and someone will pull your finger and you’d fart.
Per Axbom
Ah Okay. Hm.
James Royal-Lawson
Proper skills, of course stuff, “press my button, press my button.” So then your website, you press the button, and it would make it…I don’t know.
Per Axbom
But it’s interesting, because I mean, throughout history, if you are a public speaker, you’d sometimes read advice on public speaking. And they would say, start off with a joke to build trust and rapport and relationships and appeal. But I can see it starting off with a joke working in the entirely opposite direction, meaning that people will stop listening if they don’t like your joke.
James Royal-Lawson
Well, I mean, that’s, I can understand that advice, looping back again, to what we’re saying about them, having a relationship or knowing the audience to a degree. When you do a talk Per, you’re going to be giving it to a group of people where you have information about certain attributes of that group. They are because of your talk itself. You might be designers or you know it’s an international conference, or you know it’s a conference in Germany or… there are parameters that you do have with you when you go into that. And same as they do and or something. So you’ve got, you’ve got shared information and a shared space, which means certain jokes will work.
Per Axbom
Yeah, I actually recently I did a talk for for programmers, and I was able to work in jokes about people having the surname null because in Programming, using the word null means that it’s an empty string. I mean, this doesn’t make sense to you at all, if you don’t understand programming, but for them, of course, it worked. And then I could go on to build on that story and the actual, the actual dangers and risks of having that certain surname and what it means for for public facing services and the problems that they these people actually have in real life. So it means taking something funny, and then also using that to prove a point. So you’re actually building on top of the joke, which is an interesting concept as well.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, you take a situation that seems hilarious that you would make that kind of mistake and cause that kind of problem, but then it’s not humorous necessarily, for all the people who are involved.
Per Axbom
Exactly and I am attentive and conscious of that and explain it to the audience as well. After the joke.
James Royal-Lawson
I hope there was some humour in this show.
Per Axbom
I think there was, I mean, I would love for people to reflect on this. There are so many questions in my head around humour and how I feel now almost more aware of maybe I should avoid humour. And at the same time, as I don’t really want to avoid it, and it’s difficult. It’s really difficult.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, it’s, like I said, if you feel a bit sad that you’ve come to a conclusion that humour’s dangerous, but, you know, what are we without humour?
Per Axbom
Exactly, it’s just, yeah. Perplexing.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Fascinating balance between being sufficiently inclusive, but also sufficiently human, I guess, because, as we’ve learned humans bond through humour.
Per Axbom
I mean, I wouldn’t mind this, I think this would be a fun thing. I wouldn’t mind our listeners sending us jokes, some of their favorite jokes, and I would, I love hearing jokes. And I won’t take offence. And I’m just interested in what people find funny.
James Royal-Lawson
I would, Per, like now when we’ve reached 300 episodes, to thank a few of the people that actually make this happen, apart from me and you. One in particular, of course, is Remy.
Per Axbom
Yeah. Who does all the editing of the shows. And we’ve come to the point where we actually just send our files and say, “Put something together for us. Thank you.” And it works.
James Royal-Lawson
He’s listened to a lot of shows now of course doing the production, so he’s the one that makes the decisions when it comes to some of the details of what gets in and what doesn’t.
Remi Lafvas
Hello, everyone in the UX podcast community. This is Remy from the editing room. I have had the honour and privilege to edit this podcast since 2014. It’s been crazy. So many years, so many episodes. And now we are here, Episode 300. Fantastic. People asked me what my job as an editor is like, well, to cut a long story short. Yep, that was that was the joke. The story of cutting part. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Keep on doing that. It keeps us all alive. Goodbye.
James Royal-Lawson
And then we have teams of volunteers, which you’ll have heard as asking for more volunteers of the last few years. And one of those volunteers is Mike White, who does help almost every episode with publishing the transcript. And he’s actually contributing one of the jokes that is included in this episode.
Per Axbom
It’s amazing. Remember to keep moving.
James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.
[Music]
James Royal-Lawson
Now Per, you said this is apparently that according to research the funniest joke ever.
Per Axbom
According to research done in early 2000s.
James Royal-Lawson
Okay. Two hunters are out in the woods. When one of them collapses. He’s not breathing, and his eyes are glazed. So his friend calls 911
Per Axbom
My friend is dead. What should I do?
James Royal-Lawson
The operator replies,
Per Axbom
Calm down so I can help. First make sure that he’s dead.
James Royal-Lawson
There’s a silence, then a loud bang. Back on the phone, the guy says
Per Axbom
Okay, now what
This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom and Delia Chiaro recorded in October 2022 and published as episode 300 of UX Podcast.