Over the course of the past multiple decades, humor has come to evolve over time. Humor used to be found in old comics in sections of newspapers, to now blowing up and distorting a random photo, putting a random overused sound over it, and people, in modern times, will find it extremely comical. 

Humor is essentially the act of something or someone being amusing and making people laugh. Humor comes in all different shapes and forms, but it is often hard to tell which people enjoy which humor. In some cases, people may just laugh at anything, whether it is a random word coming out of someone’s mouth or a video of a piece of toast falling down.

Mental health can also play a role in what kind of humor is liked. Depression can often lead to finding nothing comical or finding almost everything comical, based on people’s coping mechanisms. 

A fair amount of humor back decades ago would now be deemed terrible to say in today’s society. In today’s media, some jokes from previous decades would be considered racist, sexist or homophobic, being that they were widely accepted, however wrong, while still not appropriate today. Humor now is much more inclusive, keeping from and trying not to offend as many people.

Dark humor is a way of making jokes about something that is considered “serious” or “painful to discuss.” In today’s society, dark humor is a way a lot of people cope with trauma that has gone on in their lives. When using dark humor, some people tend to get a little bit uncomfortable with not knowing how to respond to the joke that someone made, or not knowing if they should laugh or not. People sometimes joke about their traumatic experiences as a way to cope, make themselves happier, to forget about it or think about something else.

A lot of humor comes from popular social media platforms including TikTok or Instagram. Aimless pictures and videos can be found among those apps which are  humorous to some. With most of Gen Z on the apps,  most of their humor compiles itself there. . With these apps, nowadays humor has developed to be less intelligent than it used to be. Decades ago, humor was not  too intellectual, but it was  more than it is in modern-day society. Humor can be based from generation to generation. If a person from Generation Z tells a joke that they find comical to Baby Boomers or Generation X, they may find it not as funny as Gen Z would. Humor gets passed down from generation to generation, but sometimes it seems to have gotten lost along the way.

In today’s society, humor can be anything from a comedy show, for example, “Saturday Night Live,” to watching a five-second video of a distorted image with a blasting sound in the background. Saturday Night Live, (commonly known as SNL), is an American Comedy show that people have been laughing at since 1975. SNL has evolved over time based on what people find comical and what they do not find comical. 

So called “class clowns” are another big thing in modern high school society. Class clowns are referenced in movies, T.V. shows and books, but are also a thing in reality too. In reality, class clowns break the tension in the classroom by trying to make people laugh, even though they know they shouldn’t be.

Humor overall differs from person to person, generation to generation, but it brings people together through time.