Like Any Knife, Humor Can Cut Audience Tension or Be a Self-Inflicted Wound
In a world filled with verbal venom, humor can be an antidote that makes a point gently with a smile. Two recent examples make the point.
Tommy Tomlinson, a prize-winning columnist, author and cat parent, used humor to describe how dogs domesticated humans, not the other way around.
Gary Smith, an economics professor at Pomona College, penned a spoof about how to fix the financial woes of colleges – by eliminating faculty, then students – to poke serious fun at the trend of having fewer professors and more administrators.
Using humor, it turns out, is serious business. Stanford University created a podcast to talk about the unsuspecting power of humor in a wide range of settings, including business and personal relationships.
Host Matt Abrahams, who teaches strategic communication at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, opened the podcast with this: “Humor is like a Swiss army knife. It allows you to connect with your audience. It can diffuse tension, elevate status, compel others to your point of view and that’s not all. Humor can help you and your message stand out. Yet most of us hesitate to use humor in our professional lives.”
Like any knife, humor can cut both ways. It can slice through distance and indifference to reach an audience, and it can result in a self-inflicted wound. Like any dangerous weapon, humor requires training, discipline and timing. That includes humorous writing. Here’s a readout of two stories that used gentle humor as the foot in the door.
Dog and Man
Tomlinson wrote The Elephant in the Room, which traces the life travails of an overweight man (himself) and Dogland, which is an account of 100 dog shows all over the world, including the Westminster Dog Show. One critic praised the book as a “lick in the face”.
The cat owner’s recent column in The Washington Post is a tail-wagging reprise of the long history of dog and mankind. It begins, “The dog is humankind’s greatest invention. The wheel, the lightbulb, concrete — all amazing. Top of the line. But nothing in human creation has been as essential and adaptable as the countless descendants of the ancient gray wolf.”
From the beginning, Tomlinson speculates as if stroking a dog’s head, the relationship was based on mutual survival. Hunters tossed bones into nearby forests where wolves lurked for an easy meal. The wolves served as four-legged lookouts who howled when something dangerous approached the hunters. “Over time the wolves crept closer. One fateful night a curious wolf came all the way into the firelight. The humans didn’t chase it off.”
“Slowly, the humans mingled with the wolves,” Tomlinson writes. “After days or months or generations or centuries, a wolf curled up at a human’s feet. Maybe got its belly rubbed. That was the first dog.” Over time, dogs evolved, presumably at the whim of man.
“So dogs are not just humanity’s greatest invention but also its longest-running experiment. That’s one way to look at it.”
Tomlinson poses an alternative view. “Around the time early humans evolved, Neanderthals also walked the planet. At some point – roughly 40,000 years ago – humans started to thrive while Neanderthals died off. And this is about the time when those first curious wolves began to evolve into dogs. Some scientists believe the timing is not a coincidence. Maybe the dog was the key advantage in the triumph of humankind.
“Dogs enabled humans to settle down and stop their endless wandering. Dogs protected humans at this vulnerable transition from nomadic to settled life. Dogs did work that humans did not have the strength or stamina to do: guarding, herding, hunting, pulling sleds. They created time for humans to build and think and create without having to focus every moment on the next meal or the next threat. We domesticated dogs, and they domesticated us.”
His furry conclusion: “From the gray wolf by the ancient fire to a coifed Pomeranian prancing around the show ring, dogs have been with us nearly as long as we have been human. They might be our greatest creation. And we might be theirs.”
Fixing College
Smith engages satire in his opinion piece about “fixing college finances”. ”Two imminent threats to higher education are bloated bureaucracies and clever chatbots. Herewith, I humbly propose a straightforward way to solve both problems.”
He describes using his own college as an example. “In 1990, Pomona had 1,487 students, 180 tenured and tenure-track professors and 56 administrators…. As of 2022, the most recent year for which I have data, the number of students has increased 17 percent to 1,740, while the number of professors has fallen to 175 and the number of administrators has increased to 310.”
“Even for a college as rich as Pomona, this insatiable demand for administrators will eventually cause a budget squeeze,” Smith writes. “Happily, there is a simple solution.”
His tongue-in-cheek solution: “This trend can be accelerated by not replacing retiring or departing professors and by offering generous incentives for voluntary departures. To maintain its current 9.94 student-faculty ratio, the college need only admit fewer students each year as the size of its faculty withers away. A notable side effect would be a boost in Pomona’s U.S. News & World Report rankings as its admissions rate approaches zero.
“And just like that, the college would be rid of two nuisances at once. Administrators could do what administrators do – hold meetings, codify rules, debate policy, give and attend workshops and organize social events – without having to deal with whiny students and grumpy professors.”
The Humorless Lesson to Learn
In the hands of professional communicators like Tomlinson and Smith, humor is a tool that can make a sharp point without any bloodshed. One of the advantages of writing humor is that you can edit it before posting it. The editing process can be a great equalizer, sharpening what’s humorous and slicing away what isn’t funny – or may be potentially offensive.
As any stand-up comic will attest, timing is everything to humor. That’s why even an accomplished comic like Jerry Seinfeld still tries out his routine before a live audience in a small club. Writing humor provides the same opportunity to get a reaction before going public.
But here’s the ironic message of this blog about humor – don’t try to be spontaneously funny in front of an audience. It can and often does backfire. Worst of all, a lackluster response from an audience can put a speaker on his or her back foot for the rest of their talk or presentation.
Humor is a great gift. Our human understanding would be deficient without the satirical humor of Mark Twain or the country wisdom of Will Rogers or the arrow-through-the-head comedy of Steve Martin. Because it is a gift, humor should be treated with respect, not abuse or misuse. Humor can be a gamechanger. If you know what you’re doing, it can be a winner. If you don’t, it could be one of the most embarrassing moments in your life.
As Tomlinson tells us, all humans may be living a dog’s life. Just remember, some pooches aren’t funny.
