Official Worlds Funniest joke
 

LONDON, England -- The world's funniest joke has been revealed after a year-long search by scientists.

In an experiment conducted in Britain, people around the world were invited to judge jokes on an Internet site as well as contribute their own.

The LaughLab research, carried out by psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman, from the university of Hertfordshire, attracted more than 40,000 jokes and almost two million ratings.

And here it is...

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services.

He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"

Wiseman said the joke worked across many different countries and appealed to men and women and young and old alike.

"Many of the jokes submitted received higher ratings from certain groups of people, but this one had real universal appeal," he said.

As well as identifying the joke which appealed most to people around the world, the experiment revealed wide humour differences between nations.

People logging onto the LaughLab Web site were invited to rate jokes using a "Giggleometer" which had a five-point scale ranging from "not very funny" to "very funny".

One intriguing result was that Germans -- not renowned for their sense of humour -- found just about everything funny and did not express a strong preference for any type of joke. (Full story)

People from the Republic of Ireland, the UK, Australia and New Zealand most enjoyed jokes involving word plays.

Many European countries, such as France, Denmark and Belgium, displayed a penchant for off-beat surreal humour, while Americans and Canadians preferred jokes where there was a strong sense of superiority -- either because a character looks stupid or is made to look stupid by someone else.

Europeans also enjoyed jokes that involved making light of topics that make people feel anxious, such as death, illness and marriage.

Wiseman said: "These results are really interesting. It suggests that people from different parts of the world have fundamentally different senses of humour.

"Humour is vital to communication and the more we understand about how people's culture and background affect their sense of humour, the more we will be able to communicate effectively.

"Also, we find jokes funny for lots of different reasons. They sometimes make us feel superior to others, reduce the emotional impact of anxiety-provoking situations or surprise us because of some kind of incongruity.

"The hunters joke contained all three elements."

Bizarrely, computer analysis of the data also showed that jokes containing 103 words were thought to be especially funny. The winning "hunters" joke was 102 words long.

Many jokes submitted contained references to animals. Jokes mentioning ducks were considered particularly funny.







....That is not even funny

Unfunny.

Funny-less.

Lack-o-funny.

anti-funny

at least the punchline wasn't "Wit is Educated Insolence'.

I love the sig you made for me. It s a new forum picture =)

we should make up a joke where the punchline is "wit is educated insolence"

fuck you

*Split
Grav and Knight don't do that again

The weasel joke was much funnier.

The chicken jokes were the best.

Heh, chicken is an awesome word

:O)

they accually had this joke on the news here like its a big deal and shit

give this man a dollar :eek:

Hey Mightychicken, your back!

Rrrright...

dig for gold! DIG FOR GOOOOOLLLLLLLLLD!

if I said chickens were the coolest animals on the planet, would someone give me....say....$10?

chickens are totally uncool. they are birds with wings on wings on them but cant even fly, no wonder they are being eaten all the time. they are almost even worst then being penguins! :eek:

man, go have a look in the WRT. I must have posted the word chicken 10000 times

chickens used to be able to fly......wild chickens....its just people domesticated them, and bred em for being fat and having lots of meat so now they cant fly

Dammit, chickens and their meat on their bonesss soo good...

I want chicken!

I had chicken for dinner......lemon chicken.....it was great!

what are u talkin about? the coolest animals on the planet are platypuses

no, its the sloth......I aspire to be like a sloth, one day....sleeping 20 hours, having moss grow on me.....

nah man it's either a hippo, polar bear, or a giraff :)

:O) :O)
lol thats the most:gaypst: ive seen all day

So did I. I had Chicken sishk-abob

i had.... cereal. cuz im a lazy bastard

yeah well, i haven't eaten in three days, so I WIN!

oh yeah, i hope some of you at least remember me a little bit. i just ghot back from a trip to japan. it was awesome.

i remember your sig..

Back on topic,

Its tottaly stupid to claim worlds funniest joke, How the hell do they get off doing that, what a gay as company id sue there asses for trying to say somethings the funniest joke...

Yeah, Ok its the funniest joke when u ask the worlds AVERAGE PERSON if it was funny, THe worlds average person is poor and has an iq less then every person on zelaron (Taco?...maybe not)... Anyway, they need to have funniest joke based on REGION/IQ/Type of person/etc/etc which is Tottally impossible as nobodys sence of humor matches the other 100%. You cant claim its the WORLDS funniest, they diddnt even poll 99% of EVERY OTHER FUCKING COUNTRY. Thats like fucking saying "Coca Cola is the worlds favorite soda because everyone that drinks coca cola says so" Or "UGC is the worlds best forum because we asked everyone at ugc what the worlds best forum is and they said it was ugc"

Those people are just damn idiots they need to be shown some of the sence of humor I would laugh at hit in the face by something funny like... Hit them in the face with a random shovel or possibly a food of some sort unexpectdly at there mothers funeral. grrrrr

That was so not funny... Who the hell would think thats funny...

Not me thats forsure..

Mmhmm

yah, it def wasnt funny

maybe they excluded dirty jokes from their survey? but I can still think of plenty of non dirtuy jokes that are funnier