Humour Can Be Both Fatuous And Serious

Humour is an enigmatic and ephemeral gift to mankind. It acts as the universal language that we all understand and more often than not, the concordant response would be laughter. Humour is often times regarded as the spawn of spontaneity and creativity that brings joy to the soul – as the saying goes, “laughter is the best medicine. ” Henceforth, conclusive that humour does bring much benefit into our lives with some pointing out that humour should be treated seriously given its plethora of perks, yet cynics still argue that humour can only exist in the realms of frivolity, often dismissing intellectual and jurisdictional application of humour. The idea of humour being serious brings grim sobriety, which is counterintuitive to the former interpretation of humour. Thus, while humour can hold importance, it should not warrant pensiveness as humour brings merriment and boost spirits, acting as the panacea against society’s grimmest situations. The vehement belief of humour being synonymous with frivolity manifested in cynics stems from comprehension that humour compromises the gravity of a situation, and results in digression of a serious topic.

In the eyes of cynics, humour is fatuous and imprudent, especially when injected inappropriately during a serious discussion, potentially undermining the importance of it. One such infamous example would be the YouTuber Logan Paul who has a following of 15 million followers. The American YouTube star received much criticism when he posted a video which showed the body of an apparent suicide victim in Japan which deviates from his usual light-hearted and funny content. In the video, Paul is seen laughing and would go as far as to making jokes about suicide, resulting in a backlash from his audiences. Given the Paul’s massive influence on social media, it would be fair to conclude that certain members amongst his audience would have been compelled to act in similar fashion; despite it being inappropriate and disrespectful.

Prospectively, this entails an indifferent dismissal of suicide and that one taking his or her own life could be relegated as a mere joke – on top of that, Japan has one of the highest suicide rates among developed nations, with recent data showing still reflecting a positive yet concerning trend. Indeed, when used inappropriately, humour can be fatuous. However, to conclude that humour likens to imprudence solely on this premise would be to commit an erroneous fallacy of hasty generalisation. In fact, when humour is utilised intellectually and jurisdictionally, it can serve a purpose for a serious cause.