On the Light Side with Witty Content

Share your tips to website humor

[paynt]

I’m not very funny really although I like a good laugh. In fact I’m considered very serious by the people around me so to bring humor and levity into a site would not be an easy trick for me. Anyone here using comedy, humor or wit on their site and want to share tips on how you do that and make it work? I wonder how one site attempting humor falls flat while another brings tears of laughter?

[DrCool]

I am starting to use some humor on one of my sites. It is basically a first person account of my experience with a particular product and I am "enhancing" my story with some humor and funny stories. I think it is a good way to go because the people who read it can probably relate better to a story by a regular guy than a complicated technical description. I think it also give credibility because it is showing that I fully support this product.

A friend of mine has a site and he had a funny first person story about how he found out about a particular product on the home page. He decided to test the site and took the page down and took the customers directly to the shopping portion of the site. With the page up the sales were about 10 times what they were without it.

[martinibuster]

On the other hand, it's difficult to make it work on a tutorial site. I visited one not too long ago and this guy was strettttching out the tutorial (on how to use htmlkit) waaaay longer than it had to be, with a folksy forced humor that was more annoying than funny.

What he was up to was using humor as filler so as to get you to click to the next page so that he could serve up some more pop-ups.

[martin]

I don't know when some people do it it's good (see below), when I try it sounds boring.

"Perl uses plenty of metacharacters. In fact, you'll wear your keyboard pretty evenly during a night's perl hacking. I think it is safe to say that Perl uses every possible keystroke and shifted keystroke on a standard US PC keyboard."
<link snip - think the post stands well without it>

Anyone knows the spice I need to add?

[edited by: paynt at 1:47 am (utc) on Aug. 18, 2002]

[ScottM]

I've used humor alot.

People really like the humor aspect.

I played a practical joke in our city...and the next thing you know...the famous humorist Dave Barry shows up to take advantage of it.

My humor page is in my profile. As always...all original.

[ScottM]

Sure Martini:

The 'qwerty' keyboard was invented long ago.

I, myself, tried to market the:

"fef%$te:{P]-jher" keyboard, However the reception of it was minimal.

I'm ST^ill having a bit of trou*ble with ne$w lay}{out. It se#EMS TO BE A BIT bUGGY{_+@//"/?

[martin]

>fef%$te:{P]-jher keyboard

It would be nice if you avoid duplicate keys ;-)

What's that green background at your site, I couldn't read anything before Ctrl-G'ing it.

[Eric_Jarvis]

writing humorously is difficult in any medium...I spent around a decade doing writer development with playwrights, and specialising in comedies, these are the basics that I've learnt

be yourself...if you wouldn't normally make a joke in a particlar context then don't force it in order to try to be funny...it will only come over as out of character

use your own sense of humour...don't try to predict how an audience will react...you are pretty much bound to get it wrong...put the humour there because YOU like it, not because you think somebody else might

don't rely on a joke working every time

never use a joke that doesn't help towards the purpose of the web site (though sometimes simply lightening the mood may be sufficient reason)

get the mood right first...don't try to shoehorn jokes into an otherwise formal piece of writing

decide how the joke is to be delivered and give it the correct context...for example it may have a feeling of whispering behind somebody's back...or it may be delivered as a chalenge...but whatever the mode of delivery, it has to sit naturally in the surounding text

two things from a different context may help too

Somerset Maughan..."murder your litle darlings"...meaning take out anything you utterly love but which doesn't advance your purposes...he used it about writing, it applies very strongly to comedy

Pady McAloon..."the most eloquent way to speak or to pray, is straight from the heart"...it's also the best way to be funny

[paynt]

Eric_Jarvis thank you. What a great post!