Humor allows us to explore which rules and social boundaries are important through laughter and probing, but there is also a risk of crossing the line and breaking the safe space. Laughter can be a tool for enforcing social norms but it can also be a source of tension.
Comedians discuss the subjectivity of humor and share their experiences of not always being funny, as well as talk about the idea of fighting Joe Rogan and the financial benefits that could come from it.
Conan O'Brien talks about how Madonna surprised him with a birthday cake while he was working at his office, leaving him in disbelief.
The general problem of self-supervised learning for humor detection is difficult to solve, although a supervised learning route can be utilized to construct a dataset and predict whether there is humor present in a given text.
The Laugh Track, a staple of sitcoms, was created in the late 1940s and found its heyday in the 70s, despite being tested on focus groups in the 60s with mixed results. The announcement "filmed before a live studio audience" was made to ensure viewers that the laughter heard was mostly genuine.
Charlie Douglas created the first laugh track in 1950 by splicing together a library of recorded laughter to augment and replace the laughter of live studio audiences who could be unpredictable and disruptive.