Anti-humour

Anti-humor is a type of indirect humor that involves the joke-teller delivering something which is intentionally not funny, or lacking in intrinsic meaning. The practice relies on the expectation on the part of the audience of something humorous, and when this does not happen, the irony itself is of comedic value. Anti-humor is also the basis of various types of pranks and hoaxes.

The humor of such jokes is based on the surprise factor of absence of an expected joke or of a punch line in a narration which is set up as a joke. This kind of anticlimax is similar to that of the shaggy dog story. In fact, some researchers see the "shaggy dog story" as a type of anti-joke.

The shaggy dog story involves telling an extremely long joke with an intricate (and sometimes horribly grisly) back story and surreal or repetitive plotline, before ending the story with either a weak spoonerism, or abruptly stopping with no real punchline at all.

Another type of anti-joke gives a suggestion of building to a (typically risqué) punchline, but breaks the audience's anticipation by swerving to a non-risqué punchline or no punchline at all: "Did you hear about the honeymooners who confused the tube of K-Y Jelly with window putty? Quite the tragedy, all the windows fell out of their new home."

One more type of anti-humor is found in the joke "No soap radio". The joke is meant to have no punch line. When someone tells the joke, it is most likely with their friends, and it is meant to confuse others who don't know that there isn't supposed to be a joke.

One other type of anti-humor is a joke where the punch line is a pun on the phrase "no punchline". For example: "A boy wants to go to his high school dance. First he needs to rent a tuxedo, so he waits in a long tuxedo-rental line. Then he goes to the school and waits in a long ticket line to buy a ticket. Finally the night of the dance arrives. The boy goes to the dance and when he enters, he decides to drink some punch. The boy looks around but there's no punchline."

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