Humour has been reduced to a poor joke!

Raju Korti
Humour, at its finest, is a deeply human faculty. It is the psychological and cognitive ability to recognise the absurd, to find lightness in heaviness, and to connect with others through shared laughter. It thrives on wit, irony and unexpected perspectives. At its best, it relieves stress, builds bonds and helps societies cope with discomfort. Yet, what we increasingly witness today is not humour in this classical sense but its distortion into something crude, shallow and, at times, disturbingly inhuman.

(Visual conceived by me)

Recent controversies only underline this decline. The flippant reduction of human suffering into something as trivial as a “370 rupaye ki biryani” remark, or the shocking admission by a young doctor that she and her colleagues mocked the private parts of male dead bodies (read dicks), are not isolated aberrations. They are symptomatic of a larger cultural decay where insensitivity is repackaged as boldness and cruelty is mistaken for wit. These incidents are not merely offensive. They reveal a worrying shift in what we now consider acceptable humour.

To understand this erosion, it is worth revisiting why we find things funny in the first place. The incongruity theory suggests that humour arises when expectations are disrupted in surprising ways. Relief theory sees humour as a release of pent-up tension. Superiority theory explains how laughter can stem from a sense of feeling above others. It is this last strand that appears to have metastasised unchecked. What was once a fleeting psychological impulse has now become the foundation of an entire industry of mockery.

The consequences are evident in the types of humour that dominate public spaces. Body shaming is passed off as candid observation. Physical disabilities and deformities become punchlines. The dead, who command dignity in every civilised culture, are reduced to objects of ridicule. This is often justified under the convenient labels of black humour or morbid humour. But true dark humour has always had a purpose. It confronts uncomfortable truths, exposes hypocrisy or helps process grief. It does not trivialise suffering or strip individuals of dignity. What we see today is not dark humour but a darkening of humour itself.

The explosion of stand-up comedy circuits, television formats and private shows has only accelerated this trend. The barrier to entry has lowered, but so have the standards. Many performers rely on contrived provocations, rehearsed outrage and predictable jabs at the vulnerable. The canned laughter that follows, whether from a live audience conditioned to respond or from recorded tracks, creates an illusion of success. It reinforces mediocrity rather than challenging it. The result is a feedback loop where the easiest laugh is also the cheapest, and therefore the most frequently deployed.

This degeneration is not without consequence. Humour that humiliates does not relieve stress. It transfers it. It creates discomfort rather than dissolving it. It alienates rather than unites. When laughter comes at the cost of another’s dignity, it ceases to be a social glue and becomes a social toxin. One may still laugh, but it is a hollow reaction, closer to derision than delight.

It is often argued that humour is subjective and that boundaries are inherently fluid. That is true to an extent. But subjectivity cannot be an alibi for insensitivity. A society that normalises ridicule of the weak, the dead or the defenceless is not expanding the scope of humour. It is shrinking its moral imagination. Freedom of expression does not absolve one of responsibility. It demands a greater awareness of the impact of one’s words.

There was a time when humour could be sharp without being cruel, irreverent without being disrespectful, and bold without being vulgar. Satire could challenge power, wit could expose folly, and irony could provoke thought. That tradition has not disappeared, but it is increasingly drowned out by noise masquerading as comedy.

If humour is meant to lighten the human condition, then what we are witnessing today is its inversion. When jokes deepen discomfort, when laughter feeds on indignity, and when insensitivity is celebrated as courage, humour ceases to serve its purpose. It becomes, quite simply, unmitigated stupidity.

The question is not whether we should laugh. It is whether we still remember what is worth laughing at.