[lit-ideas] Re: Naked Gentlemen

Phil wrote, "Puns are bad and hurt people. And people who do puns hate other people because they hear the groans but
keep on making puns."

I can't tell whether Phil was joking, but he raises an interesting point. There can be an aggressive component to humor. People may use humor to mask emotions. Humor also creates plausible-deniability for aggression, allowing one to say, "Oh come on, man, don't get upset. I was only joking."

Pure puns and other wordplay are precisely that--play. But play can also be an emotional anesthetic or a mask. We trust humor when we feel secure in the motives of the humorist, I guess.

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