My phone flashes bright. A new video’s appeared in the family WhatsApp group. Before I’ve even pressed play, I’m smiling—a roll of toilet paper is in shot, so it must be good. Someone replies with a video of a naked man riding a bicycle. Mud’s spattered up his backside. Another toilet gag. A third video arrives of a toddler crying because the local McDonald’s has had to close as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, forcing her to eat her parent’s cooking. And on it goes.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused so many things to happen, some predictable, others not. European leaders have confined people at home and seen their approval ratings soar. Right-wing politicians have temporarily socialized their national economies. And as the world hunkers down, threatened by the worst global health crisis in 100 years, there’s been a mass outpouring of gags, memes, funny videos, and general silliness. We might be scared, but we seem determined to carry on laughing.
What is it about tragedy that is so funny? Why do I find myself flicking through Twitter in the evening, alternately looking at tables of COVID-19 death rates and bidet memes? How can I find something so scary one minute so funny the next? And what is it about this crisis in particular that has spawned such an industrial output of humor? Even as I wrote this piece, looking out my window on a locked-down London, a video arrived from a neighbor featuring a stack of empty beer cans singing “Nessun dorma.” Is this some kind of hysteria?
The why of humor has long been a mystery. For ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, ..
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