haha WTF

     When Mikhail Bakhtin claimed that carnivalesque humor is specific to the middle ages and inherently different from modern satire, he was both right and wrong. To see how modern humor actually parallels folk carnival humor in a variety of ways, you'll have to read my English paper. However, he is right in that humor is often a product of a specific time and culture.
     Though it is hard to pin down the exact age range of people who submit and read TFLN, the content makes it clear that it is geared towards contemporary American youth, some of whom are still in school. Though the content or subject of the joke can be age specific sometimes, as the website explains, "[their] goal was to create a site that was revealing in nature while concealing the identity of everyone involved. " As a result, the text itself displays other characteristics of humor so that the its style offers insight to a broader trend in our culture today.

(609): Made a joint out of my Yale rejection letter. Life is grand.

     While the humor can come from the sarcasm of the statement "life is grand" at the end of the joke, in this case it is also possible that the person is sincere...and high. The humor of this text mostly come from the stark contrast between a joint and Yale (or maybe if we're being brutally realistic, they aren't necessarily contradictory?). Most of the humor resides on the stunning incongruity of these two things. We call it shock humor. Like frosting on a cake, another element that contributes to the humor of this text is the detail. It wasn't not just any upsetting letter, but a rejection letter. It wasn't any rejection letter, but one from Yale. These details also give hints about how the person was probably a serious, and academically successful student, bringing more contrast to the joint, which brings another side of him to light. Thus, the details enhance the contrast. On a similar note, using the word "grand" as opposed to just "good" also contributes to the humor.
     Here is another example of how detail contributes to the comical effects of a joke, "(412): You are writing your college essay comparing yourself to Lady Gaga, Vladimir Putin, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and you are worried about the conclusion sounding cheesy?"
     First of all, the outrageous contrast and impossible links (personally, I can't figure out any connection between Lady Gaga and Putin besides the fact that they live on the same planet and are on the news a lot) lead us back to humor from the sheer ridiculousness of the text. Moreover, the specific names enhance the joke because of all the connotations that come with them.
     This joke not only represents how detail and incongruities work in humor, but also reflects how humor changes with our culture. Nowadays, with 10 windows opened on our screen, the song flowing through our earphones and the iPhone spazzing with new textsconveys a message about our lifestyles, we need flashy and gripping things like big names to grab us. And really, our attention span only lasts as long as it takes to read that name. In our fast paced lives, we no longer settle down to appreciate the subtly and the buried sarcasm in a joke. We only enjoy spurts of shock humor that tear our eyes away for whatever we were doing. Thus, technology and pop culture not only shapes our lifestyles, but also contribute to the evolution of our culture change alongside us.