Funny or cynical?

Suppose you make up a joke and want to share it with someone. If you say that you made up the joke, people will not find it funny unless you are a popular comedian. Even many comedians narrate their jokes as though it happened to somebody else. Although I am sure that they are modifying the facts. Now why is this case? I cannot get an answer to this question without being cynical. Are they jealous that you are funny? But envy is not convincing enough to explain this behavior or rather maybe I don’t want to believe it. Maybe I am not cynical enough. But I cannot fail to ignore the fact that the only way you can make someone laugh by saying something about yourself is by ridiculing yourself.

It is also possible to be funny by ridiculing a third person, like someone you dislike. But more often it might as well be one of our friends. Sometimes, we just laugh at how silly one of our friends can be. But is it always so? Why is ridiculing our friends funny? The unscrupulous act of ranting off about your friends on careful scrutiny unravels the dark emotions hidden inside. And if these emotions are not faced under the scorching wrath of our own conscience, they can make us a bad person even by our own standards. If we think about it, there are three main reasons why we may indulge ourselves in such an act:

1. We are euphemistically putting out a condescending remark about that person.
2. We are angry that he/she thinks he/she is better than ourselves or at least, that’s what we think.
3. Or the worst, we think we are better than him/her.

Of course, the above points are not always true, but when they are, they are worth contemplation.