I remember jocks back in high school who were so cool. I remember that everything they said was so funny, too. And they were so masculine. There was a jockish (1) coolness and (2) humor and (3) masculinity to everything that they did.

These three things are an interesting triad for me: (1) coolness and (2) humor and (3) masculinity. I don't really understand the nature of each of them. Maybe it's way too nebulous to ask about the nature of these complex phenomena, but I still wonder what you guys think. We all say that people are (1) "cool" and (2) "funny" and (3) "masculine" all the time, but I want to understand as much as I can what these things really are. These three things often really blend together for me, and seem to have interesting relationships.

1: What is the nature of coolness? What is it exactly? Being “cool” in high school often seems to just mean being “popular.” Your “coolness” is just your position in the social hierarchy. Or maybe the word is being used in different ways, such that it can be a synonym for “popular” but doesn’t have to be. And so that raises the question: What is the nature of popularity? It’s all about social adeptness, right? This must all have an evolutionary basis of some kind, but it’s very mysterious to me. We are obviously very removed from the environment in which we evolved. It would be interesting to compare the social ecosystem of a high school with the social ecosystems of hunter-gatherers.

2: How does coolness relate to physical attractiveness? Hot people are usually regarded as cool, aren’t they? Coolness is supposed to be a “personality quality,” but I often see hot people described as “cool” just because they’re hot; the conflation of coolness and physical attractiveness is very confusing and puzzling and interesting to me. Being jacked apparently makes you “cool,” for example.

3: What is the nature of humor? How would you guys describe the nature of what it means to be funny? What is its evolutionary role? It has a powerful role in all our lives. It determines how much we like a friend or a potential mate. If you can make someone laugh then you’ve got them in the palm of your hand, either socially or sexually. Why is this so? Why did humor evolve?

4: How would you guys describe the nature of masculinity? On TRP they sometimes summarize it as “having a strong frame.” But “frame” is a notoriously vague term, and many have criticized “frame” for being a vacuous pseudo-technical term that can’t be well-defined. The top post of all time on TRP says:

As a man, you naturally have a strong frame of reality whereas women don’t. Therefore they value that. (Having a strong frame is a result of high testosterone levels.)

Women are attracted to masculinity. And masculinity can be defined as a measure of how much pressure a man can endure without it breaking his frame.

5: What is the relationship between masculinity and humor? This is maybe the most fascinating relationship for me, and it’s the main reason that I started this thread. For some reason, I laugh more at very masculine guys’ humor. In this comment /u/darla10 described her take on the relationship between masculinity and humor:

the more masculine, the more confident. the more confident, the more secure. the more secure, the more easy going. the more easy going, the funnier.

6: Is laughing at a masculine man’s joke a form of showing deference/respect? In other words, it’s like submitting to his power? That has an obvious evolutionary logic: you submit to the badass dominant male so you don’t fall out of favor with him or get your ass kicked, and you show this submission through smiling/laughing. [I think that monkeys smile/laugh too. I wonder (1) what that particular nonverbal communicates exactly in both monkeys and in humans and (2) WHY that particular action—in this case the revealing of the teeth and contraction of certain muscles that create the “smile”—happens to have taken on the communicative meaning that it has. You can ask those two questions about all nonverbals. We often take them for granted.]

6: Why is it that I find jokes/humor funnier when the man has an extremely deep voice? It makes me laugh more. There’s one man I know who cracks me up with almost everything he says, but he has an extremely deep voice and I imagine that if it were of normal depth then it wouldn’t be as funny. And almost anything would be non-funny if the guy had a high-pitch voice…in fact the exact same thing could be hilarious/not-funny/creepy depending on the depth (and other aspects) of the voice.

7: Is it true that men are funnier than women or is that just bullshit?

8: What is the relationship between coolness and humor? I find that cool people are usually funnier too. People laugh at cool people’s humor more.

9: This is not PC, but I happen to regard black guys as extremely cool. Why are black males cooler? And why are they funnier and more masculine? (It’s almost like this triad of coolness/humor/masculinity is tightly interwoven for me.)

10: Why are fat people considered funny? There’s an interesting relationship between appearance and how funny you are. If you haven’t read this then definitely check it out. It’s a post from someone who lost a ton of weight about how it changed their identity and their whole life. There’s a fascinating comment in it, though:

You miss being able to get cheap laughs for being the fun fat person.

EDIT: I would also appreciate any insights you guys have on the relationship between coolness and masculinity; I forgot to include that "side of the triangle."