The World Is Funny If You Pay Attention

The humor I enjoy tends to be funny situations and ridiculous reactions. I’ve always liked funny sarcasm. Not necessarily comedy, like joke jokes. Observing humanity and the world’s ridiculousness.

My favorite kind of humor comes from people noticing the absurdity that already exists around us. Florida Man; books like Dungeon Crawler Carl; shows like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and Seinfeld; movies like The Princess Bride; characters like Ron Weasley and his reactions; and just regular life.

That’s why I’ve always loved George Carlin. My favorite Carlin routines were rarely traditional jokes. They were observations.

One of my favorite bits of his was about “stuff.” Not because it was a complicated joke, but because once he pointed it out, you couldn’t stop seeing it.

Everyone has stuff. You move your stuff from one place to another. You buy bigger places to hold more stuff. Then you need places to store the stuff that no longer fits with your other stuff.

It’s funny because it’s true.

That’s my favorite kind of humor. Not punchlines… Recognition. The moment when someone points at reality and says:

“Wait a minute…”

Veronika Has Questions About Human Intelligence

For example, I recently read about a cow named Veronika.

Someone discovered that Veronika was using different parts of a brush for different purposes when scratching herself. Think about that for a second. Somewhere in Austria, a cow developed a preferred tool-use strategy.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, a human is staring at IKEA instructions upside down, wondering why there are three screws left over. The cow appears to be winning.

About Those Robots

For seventy years, science fiction writers warned us about intelligent machines. Humanity carefully studied all those warnings and concluded: “Excellent ideas. Let’s build those.” Now AI is getting robot bodies.

Which seems like a perfectly reasonable decision if you’ve never watched a science fiction movie, read a science fiction novel, or spoken to a science fiction fan. I’m not even against it.

I’m just amused that humanity’s standard operating procedure appears to be:

1. Invent something incredible.
2. Ignore every warning label.
3. Act surprised.

Recruit the Gamers

Apparently, there are tens of thousands of unfilled cybersecurity jobs. Experts keep saying we need more people.

Author Michael Anderle recommends gamers. Gamers who spent fifteen years organizing raids may have accidentally developed skills that map surprisingly well to cybersecurity. They’ve coordinated forty-person raids, managed virtual economies, optimized resources, studied enemy behavior, built spreadsheets that would frighten accountants, and argued over percentages that only exist inside fictional worlds.

Then There are Printers

Printers are one of humanity’s greatest technological mysteries.

We can perform robotic surgery and launch satellites.

But every printer still behaves like it’s still 1980. I recently spent longer convincing a printer to connect to Wi-Fi than it took astronauts to reach the Moon. That may not be technically accurate. Emotionally, however, it feels correct.

The Social Security Dimension

Recently, I had to go to the Social Security Office to SIMPLY show my ID. I spent two and a half hours waiting with 60 other people. Numbers were being called in what appeared to be a sequence generated by ancient prophecy, rather than numerical order.

There were only 5 windows open… they had 30 windows!!!

I was eventually called, where Miss R. looked at my identification. The actual ID check took about five minutes.

Five!

I spent thirty-two dollars on parking. Thirty-two dollars!!! That… made me scream.

That means I paid over six dollars per minute for someone to verify that I was, in fact, me.

When Management Discovers Human Nature and is Surprised

One company reportedly encouraged employees to use AI, created leaderboards around usage, and then burned through its annual AI budget in just a few months. You do you Uber.

The surprising part wasn’t that the engineers used the tool. The surprising part was management acting surprised that engineers used the tool. If you put out an all-you-can-eat buffet and hand out trophies for eating, you’ve answered your own question.

I can picture the boardroom-

Executive: “We want engineers to embrace AI.”
Executive: “Let’s make a leaderboard.”
Executive: “Let’s reward usage.”
Engineers: “You want us to use it?”
Executive: “Absolutely.”
Engineers: “How much?”
Executive: “As much as possible.”
Four months later:
Executive: “Not like that.”

And maybe that’s why I enjoy observational humor so much.

The world keeps producing silly situations :

• A cow becomes a tool user.
• AI gets a body.
• Gamers might be a good fit for cybersecurity careers.
• A printer refuses to acknowledge modern civilization.
• A government office transforms waiting into an endurance sport.

None of these are jokes, just reality. The funniest observations are often true.

The world doesn’t need much exaggeration. It barely needs any help at all.