Here’s a recurring thought I’ve had: What kind of sense of humor would you say you have? Sure, we’ve all taken those personality tests that categorize your sense of humor based on 14 thousand factors, but the reality I think can be reduced down further than that, specifically into two categories: Reflexive humor and spontaneous humor.<\/p>\n
Spontaneous humorists<\/i> are most often those we’d label “funny” or folks with “a good sense of humor.” What the moniker refers to is their ability to generate a laugh without any outside catalyst. In other words, they can elicit a laugh seemingly out of thin air, just by being themselves. These are the good storytellers, the pranksters and the class clowns. They usually don’t mind being the center of attention because they’re confident in their ability to entertain.<\/p>\n
Reflexive humorists<\/i>, on the other hand, usually need something to which to respond in order to generate a laugh. An unusual situation will arise, something unexpected will happen, any number of things, and through a well-timed quip or expression in response, the reflexive humorist will elicit a laugh. Paradoxically, these folks are often the observational stand-up comedians, those who, through their perspective on the world around them can make the frustrating or bizarre seem funny. They’re usually more reserved, not always comfortable being the focus of attention all the time, but only when they can wield their sense of humor quickly and effectively, get a laugh and then retreat out of the spotlight.<\/p>\n
I’ll wager most of us fall into one of those two categories. Myself, I’m a reflexive humorist (which isn’t to say I’m roaringly funny, but on the rare chance that I do get a laugh it’s usually in response to something). I’ve wished many times that I were a member of the first category, but it doesn’t seem to be my lot. Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s a recurring thought I’ve had: What kind of sense of humor would you say you have? Sure, we’ve all taken those personality tests that categorize your sense of humor based on 14 thousand factors, but the reality I think can be reduced down further than that, specifically into two categories: Reflexive humor and spontaneous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}