Humor sites

Introduction

Humor is not only useful as entertainment, to induce laughs, or to make people happy, but can also serve a role as an education, give insights into human thinking and behaviour, hold up a mirror of self-criticism to the audience, remind how many deeply stupid people are out there, or otherwise serve a practical purpose.

The below gives an overview of humor related sites that I visit on a regular basis, where both good laughs and insights can be found.

Reader submissions are very welcome, but beware that I will only include sites that simultaneously have sufficiently high entertainment and educational values. (Even some that I enjoy myself have not been included.)

A separate page on engrish goes in a similar vein.

Dilbert

http://www.dilbert.com/^e

See a separate discussion of Dilbert, its importance, and my own experiences.

Learning from animals

Captioned animals can be both cute and funny. Further, they can provide interesting insights into human behaviour, e.g. into what expressions make someone look happy/sad/content/angry/... or into some basic behaviours and instincts that are largely suppressed, but still present, in humans.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/^e

http://ihasahotdog.com/^e

http://faildogs.com/^e

Real-life anecdotes

Some sites provide short descriptions of real-life events, in particular focusing on weird incidents, odd human behaviour, and similar—albeit, the humor is sometimes in the “Thank [deity], this did not happen to me!” category.

The likely most prominent:

http://www.fmylife.com/^e

http://itmademyday.com/^e

http://crazythingsparentssay.com/^e

http://learnfrommyfail.com/^e

I further recommend the fresh-off-the-boat family, but beware that they have a comparatively low post-per-week count:

http://mymomisafob.com/^e

http://mydadisafob.com/^e

Computer stupidities

http://www.rinkworks.com/^e

provides extensive listings of computer stupidities that can give excellent insights into the minds of the less-than-bright—or, for that matter, of the bright, who do not pay attention.

This site only contains some other humorous material. I particularly recommend the discussion of romance^e, which provides great insight into the twisted ways of the female mind (wish I had read it at 19); respectively, persuassion^e, which has the argumentative strategies of many Internet users, managers, and business graduates down pat.

Stupid customers

http://notalwaysright.com/^e

Anecdotes from dealing with unusally (?) stupid customers.

http://www.dontcomeback.net/^e

Typically short examples of stupid customers. (Sometimes, by unintended implication, of stupid or intolerant staff that complains without a good reason—or who are unable to put two intelligible sentences together...)

Funhouse of fun

http://forums.sexyandfunny.com/forumdisplay.php?f=7^e

is a forum with an immense quantity of jokes, if of varying quality. Occasionally, there are highly insightful parodies.

Consider, e.g., some takes on

religion I^e

religion II^e

rules for kids I^e

rules for kids II^e

women and over-thinking^e

how to keep men and women happy^e

modern over-protection^e

modern over-reaction^e

Visual aphorisms

http://graphjam.com/^e

Many insightful graphs and diagrams of various kinds—some amounting to graphical aphorisms. Unfortunately, few of them are actually funny; then again, as bonus, they give ample proof that most people do not understand how the various types of graphs and diagrams should be used...

Various types of “fails”

http://www.darwinawards.com/^e

The ultimate fails of humans.

http://failblog.org/^e

Many instances of absurd behaviours.

http://failbooking.com/^e

The idiocies some people write on FaceBook can be quite illuminating.

http://artoftrolling.com/^e

Various cases of trolling and related. The many “chatroulette” entries may seem useless at first, but are actually quite telling about some aspects of human behaviour in at least some people.

http://www.yahoolaughs.com/^e

Fails on “Yahoo Answers”.