T w e n t y S i d e d

Starting yesterday I started getting spam comments on this site that would just be these lists (sometimes long, sometimes short) of random English words. A sample:

I guess it’s an effort to get past heuristic filters. (Spammers don’t care about the comment, they only want the link that goes on their name.)

I see all the comments on this site in a single admin feed that shows them in the order in which they were posted, regardless of what post they come from. (My old posts still see a good bit of hit & run traffic.)

I did not think of this when I made the earlier post asking people for silly words.

I just now sorted through a pile of endless unrelated words, reading them through and thinking, “Man, what’s wrong with these people? These words aren’t very funny at all.” I was looking at the lists of words, searching for meaning or patterns that would explain why people had chosen these mundane and un-funny words. Are these people thinking of skits I’ve never seen? Are they non-native English speakers with different ideas about what sounds funny?

And then I realized I was reading spam.

So, maybe that wasn’t the best use of the last twenty minutes. The only thing that would be more pointless than reading all my spam in detail would be to write a 250 word post about my experience reading spam.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Over at Chainmail Bikini we’ve been having a running conversation about “funny words”. Words which are kind of funny in and of themselves.

The examples given in the comic include the word “pants” and “weasel”. The innate humor of the word pants is demonstrated here.

Now, almost any word can be funny if it’s just incongruous enough.

1) Sword
2) Battleaxe
3) Spear
4) Lemon

See?

But some words go above and beyond this. They feel funny or odd or silly, even before they’re integrated with a proper joke. Some of my favorites:

1) The aforementioned “Pants” and “Weasel”.
2) Too many foods to mention. I suppose some of the funniest ones would be “pudding” and “bacon”.
3) Animal sounds are always silly, but I think “Moo” is the king of them.
4) Swear words are a double-edged sword. They will make the joke funnier for some, and kill the joke for others. We all have a level of profanity we’re familiar and comfortable with. If you exceed that by just a bit, it can intensify the joke. But if you go too far past that point, it just seems like you’re trying to hard, or overcompensating. It’s like over-salting food.
5) Lots of body parts are funny: Butt, nose, gizzard, spleen, elbow. Shoulder? Not so much.

Exercise: What word just really strikes you as funny? (Other than the ones I’ve already listed.) Try to come up with one and enter it into the comments below without reading the others. I’m curious what we’ll get, and what patterns will emerge. If any.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.