What is it like to be incredibly funny?

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How does it affect your social interactions, relationships with friends and family and are there any disadvantages...
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21 Answers

Matthew Manning, I'm dashing.  (- - -  - - - -)
  • Difficult to enjoy things.  You constantly evaluate the irony of the situation you are in. It’s hard to purely enjoy something, you feel like a sell-out if you do.  You want to enjoy things more, but can't help feeling this sense of self-betrayal if you give in completely.
  • Curious.  You love nuance and idiosyncrasy.  You note the small pieces that make up things, rather than searching for the “essence” of the whole – mannerisms, motives, motifs are your specialty.
  • A well-honed insight into people.  You are highly self-reflective and, consequently, self-critical.  You usually dig about six levels deeper than normal as you evaluate why you really feel or think a certain way.  You have meta-analytical thoughts about your thoughts, and begin to consider the immovable nature of your thought processes as a whole. The alarming level of self-honesty attunes you not only to yourself, but also (deeply) to others.
  • Alienation/Isolation. Your mind is naturally wired for pattern-recognition.  The recursive nature of social interactions, the mechanization of life choices, the strangeness of formality – all of it is very frustrating and confusing.  Because people are averse to confrontation, you are often left with no choice but to point out the absurdity of these social tropes through humor.  You just hope people don’t realize that you’ve told them to go to hell until after they’ve gone home.
  • Not so good at relationships.  Partners often feel betrayed that the whole world gets to enjoy the gregarious and charismatic “you,” and they are stuck with the self-doubting neurotic version.  To compound the problem, you are extremely sensitive – over-sensitive at times – and you often try to play two to three steps ahead of your partner, which leads to a lot of emotional misfiring.
  • Profound conversational agility.  You feel as though you almost have an unfair advantage over others.  You marvel at the difficulty that others have stringing together a few simple thoughts in conversation.  You even feel sorry for some people as they make small talk with you, helping them along as they struggle to make a point or a lukewarm joke. You rarely meet a person with whom you can’t seamlessly engage, though you often wonder if you're being manipulative, and you're often bored. You consider that you should put this skill to better use, though you haven't figured that one out yet.
  • Profound divergent thinking capabilities.  You are hypercritical of everything, and constantly evaluating the reality around you from multiple angles.  Consider a blanket and a brick.  How many ways could you use these two items to create something funny?  A really funny person could probably think of about 20 different ways in a minute.
  • Profound emptiness. It’s a cliché, and it’s very often true.  Most funny people develop their humor as a secondary social advantage because they weren’t able to gain advantage in the other categories (money, attractiveness, alpha-status). Humor was a way to make it to the inner-circles, but often at the cost of one’s self.  You begin to wonder whether people love you for you, or for the show that you put on. You constantly wrestle with the duplicitous nature of yourself, and even begin to think of your humor as a mass deception that you propagate on anyone you meet.
  • Hurt. You know that you are funnier than other people around you; you control crowds with ease, people are in awe of how fast you string together different ideas and relate conversations back to their roots five stages later.  You have a group of people in stitches for an hour. And then, just like that, you take a play off and they could care less.  You didn’t earn anything.  You were only useful as long as you could do that “thing,” and then it was over.
  • Gifted.  You have this ability, this talent, this gift.  You don’t know why your brain works the way it does, but at the end of the day, you get to make people happy by simply uttering words and gesturing.  You bring joy to people’s lives, perhaps even at the cost of yourself.  A lot of times, the cost is well worth it.  Life is hard, sometimes it’s nice to just laugh.

I'm not a professional comedian, I'm just a funny person who has thought a lot about what that means and what it feels like.  These things won't be true for all funny people, but I bet they're true for most of us.

I'm sorry if this wasn't very funny.  I tried very hard to be honest.
  
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Matthew Manning
James Hesky, Comedian, kind of
While I don't really feel comfortable answering this on behalf of the "incredibly funny" people, I can at least give you an answer of what how working to become a comedian impacts your relationships and social interactions.

There are certainly some advantages.   It's a lot easier to make jokes in conversation once you know how to interact with a crowd and craft jokes on stage, you get to meet and work with some famous people that you would otherwise have no business knowing, and there is no feeling in the world quite like having a great set and then have people come up to you after the show and tell you how much they liked it.  But when it comes to dealing with your personal relationships, it can be more of a hindrance than anything else.

One of the biggest challenges for is that the best way to come up with material is just to constantly be thinking about what's funny about our every day lives.  So for me I often times spend too much time people watching or over-analyzing every situation I'm in rather than just being in the moment and enjoying it for what it is.  If I'm at a baseball game, I'm focused on stupid people in the crowd, or if I'm out to lunch with friends I'm thinking about material about people complaining about their food. 

I try to compartmentalize my life so that there are times where I just don't think about material (like when I'm at work or at some sort of family function) but as soon as I start to get bored my mind usually drifts to trying to find the absurdity in the situation that I could make a joke out of.

The other thing that's hard is that it's a job that most people don't really understand, but are totally fascinated with and usually have some sort of concept of what they think "being a comedian" means.  So as soon as someone at work or at a party finds out I'm a comedian, I usually end up having to spend a few minutes explaining to them that I have to spend four or five nights a week out at open mics or shows working on material and that crafting a joke is a long process.  It's not like I can just go up on stage and start talking about my day and be funny every time.

For that reason I don't hide the fact that I'm working to become a comedian from anyone, but I don't advertise it either. 

One of the other issues is that there is always a sense of insecurity that comes with being a comedian and that always bleeds into your everyday life.  Comedians tend to be outsiders of some sort.  It could be something like having anxiety, or some kind of weight problem, or your sexuality, or something about your beliefs not lining up with your family's beliefs or the cultural norms you grew up with.  And on top of that, now we are doing something that is further outside the cultural mainstream by spending most nights out at bars and clubs rather than focusing on getting a promotion at work or spending time with a girl to finally settle down and get married.

Whenever you go home for the holidays, you start to learn that your story of what you've been doing is vastly different than everyone else's story about going to grad school or working their way up at their company.  And even if everyone is incredibly supportive, it's hard not to feel different than everyone else.  Despite the fact that that is exactly what we're shooting for, it's a bit unsettling nonetheless.

On the other hand, at this point about 90% of my friends that I see with any regularity are comedians, so we are able to bond over these things just like any group of people who work in the same field.  We have our own social rules in some ways where we will purposefully take jokes too far, and we say the C word way more than we would around non-comedians (That may just be a Philly thing, but it does get said a lot to describe anything from another comedian, to a bachelorette party in the crowd, to a pen that won't work).

Plus, being freinds with comedians makes my facebook feed worth reading.  Rather than seeing pictures of what someone at work ate for lunch, I just get to hear some of the funniest people in the area joke about whatever is going on.

So in effect, there isn't that much difference between comedy and any job that requires a lot of time and effort.  I'm sure during law school that law students hang out with a lot of law students, and that after they graduate they hang out with the lawyers they work with. Just throw in some more anxiety and drinking and you have the life of a comedian.
  
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James Hesky
Anon User
Going Anon because I want to seem modest, and I'm much less funny on Quora than I am in real life. A little background: I am female, middle-aged, fairly geeky and socially awkward, and am mildly attractive in a Liz Lemon sort of way. By Liz Lemon, I'm talking about the character, not Tina Fey playing Liz Lemon. I too tend to get food stains on my shirts and dress in comfortable but probably less-than-flattering attire.

Anyhow, I'm the kind of person known for their witty comebacks and wisecracks. I'm good with one-liners, and more than occasionally find myself telling elaborate stories about mundane things to groups of people, who tend to  stop participating in whatever conversations they were involved in to listen to me.

Many of my friends tell me I'm the funniest person they know. And I've also heard (probably apocryphical) stories about people going to see comedians and hearing my same story or wisecrack incorporated into their act. So if you accept my "credentials" as a funny person, read on:

ADVANTAGES:
  • You get an incredible sense of personal triumph and dopamine boost. Making a witty comeback in public, especially when you've just been insulted or patronized, is one of the awesomest feelings in the world. They call it a zinger, and that's what it feels like, zingy.
  • You have more fun at parties and social events. People love a funny story and a funny person. Even if they'd otherwise have nothing to do with that person. (Guys want to hang out with Liz Lemon but nobody wants to fuck her, at least not for long.)
  • You make friends more easily. Everyone wants a funny friend, it's true.
  • You are often the center of attention. However, this is a double-edged sword.


DISADVANTAGES:
  • You are often the center of attention. And what sometimes happens in these cases is that you'll suddenly realize it and freak out a bit. What usually happens with me is that I'll spontaneously and involuntarily let out a loud fart or fall over or do something completely embarrassing, as if my own body were turning on me. This may not be the case with other funny people, but it's been a problem.
  • In the event your joke falls flat, you're given less leeway and sometimes even experience open hostility. ("I can;t believe she dropped the ball on that one.")
  • Some people will be jealous of you. Usually these are people who, IMHO, wish they could be the center of attention a little more often. These people can be mean and catty, especially if they're drunk (parties are usually where funny people get the floor).
  • A certain type of man tends to find a funny woman unappealing. This sucks because funniness in men is highly valued, and helps make some men appear more attractive to women. (Yes, I know that tons of men consider Liz Lemon their ideal woman, but the Liz character is written that way for a reason. I bet even fucking Tina Fey has toned it down for the sake of her dating life.)

At the end of the day, though, the advantages far surpass any disadvantages. Besides, all a funny person needs to do to be un-funny is shut the hell up.
  
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Alec Beckett, Creative Director
11 votes by Zach Katz, Marti LaChance, Carlos Tobin, (more)
Christopher Guest is funny.*

*He's made some of the funniest movies of all time ("This is Spinal Tap","Best in Show".) He wrote some of the funniest skits ever on SNL (Synchronized swimming with Martin Short, "Don't Get Me Started..." with Billy Crystal.)

I was lucky enough to hire him on his first commercial directing job. He was pleasure to work with. But he never laughed and rarely smiled. The Holy Grail of our pre-production meetings became the attempt to say something funny enough to get a reaction out of him. Once I threw out an idea that got the table laughing, Mr. Guest simply said, "That's funny. Let's use that." It was as if he was an autistic comedy savant.

Over the course of the shoot I realized that he had dug so deep into the perfection of the comic form that he simply saw humor as an output that needed to be maximized. It was no longer actually funny to him. He had essentially squeezed all the joy out of it. 

Yet the campaign turned out to quite funny (for college basketball on ESPN—couldn't find video but here is a descritpion http://www.adweek.com/news/adver... ) and won lots of awards.

But working with a certified comedy genius made me realize that I'd prefer to be a little less funny and a little more happy.
  
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Alec Beckett
David Stewart, not even the right wrong David Stewart
I would suggest it's often fairly isolating. I'm always struck by how many of the world's truly funny people struggle with issues of depression and have addictive personalities. Peter Cook, Spike Milligan, John Cleese, Woody Allen, Buster Keaton, Richard Pryor etc etc etc all made millions laugh but struggled with personal issues and were often faily miserable people.
  
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David Stewart
Avram Cheaney, Self perpetuating pattern
The only thing worse than the pain of being incredibly funny is the pain of being incredibly handsome, generous and wicked smart to boot.

The only thing that keeps me sane is my deeply heartfelt humility.
  
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Avram Cheaney