Summary: Women aren’t funny because they don’t need to be, while men need to be the right kind of funny—otherwise, they fail tests for intellect and dominance.

Body:

I was talking to my friend, and as always, we were cracking jokes. A mutual female friend joins us, and as always, we kept cracking jokes. But she didn’t.

Take an inventory of all your friends, male and female. Ask yourself: who’s funny? Who isn’t?

Now, there are several types of “funny” out there. The idiot who makes a fool of himself, the wisecrack with a sharp sense of wit, the guy with the canned lines and stories you know came off the jokes sub. I’m willing to bet that you’ve got a couple of male friends who are sharp motherfuckers. They think quick and read the situation right. They’re on the ball, but they don’t come off as try-hards, and they’ve got a unique style to their sense of humour that’s been cultivated for a couple of years.

Then you’ve got your male friends who are funny, but they’re not quite there. There’s something missing. The laughter you get outta their jokes is just a little bit hollow. They’re still pleasant to be around, but the conversations don’t quite compete with the first group.

After that, there are guys who aren’t very funny, but they try. It’s hit-or-miss, but it’s all in good fun. Still after these guys are the ones who aren’t funny, period, but they’ve got a sense of humour. They’ve got a couple of lines they overdo, but hey, these guys’re always there.

And now, we come to the women. I bet almost all of them laugh to your jokes, if you’re one of the first two categories. I bet most of them sometimes do “cute” or “adorable” things that might be amusing, and warrant a chuckle. I bet they all have longwinded stories to tell—and you might get a few laughs out of those stories. But for some reason, they don’t really tell… jokes. There’s never a back-and-forth banter, no verbal swordplay. For some reason, women aren’t really funny. While there are exceptions, they are, notably, exceptions. Even the woman that many deem the best right now, Amy Schumer, is not very good (my personal opinion).

What gives?

The pseudobiological answer is that cavewomen sat around the fire, listening while cavemen took center stage, telling cavemen jokes. But let’s not do pseudobiology.

Women find funnier men sexier. 1 and 2. The largely accepted reason is that funnier men tend to have higher IQs, and therefore possess higher quality sperm. In our culture, we’re often told, “If you can get her to laugh, you’re there”—this, however, drastically overlooks something. As TRP is well aware, women have the perennial issue of differentiating between funny alphas and funny betas. If you’ve been to a bar, a party, or even walked down some high school corridor, you’ll know what I mean. There’s always a nerdy guy who thinks he’s able to get panties wet by memorizing the top 14 jokes of that funniest jokes book he pirated off some torrent. This, for reasons many readers know all too well, does not work.

This “strategy” (I hesitate to call an act so idiotic this word) fails because women are vetting for not only intelligence, but also other traits—dominance, scarcity mentality, and a whole other motley of terms. When you reply with a line that sounds like you memorized it off the internet, you tell her, “I’m not smart or original enough to come up with my own lines. I’m also insecure enough about social interaction to have to Google these things before I meet others. By the way, I’m trying to impress you as well!” Not exactly a winning plan.

So what DOES work?

An oft-quoted term used here: Agree and Amplify. Let’s explore the mechanics of A&A.

Girl: You look young.

Guy: Can’t wait for puberty. Hear it’s gonna be great.

No, this is not the best response, but it serves our purposes well enough. Let’s take it apart. The girl, three words in, is already vetting our prospective chap. By stating he “looks” a certain way, she acknowledges she has no idea whether he’s actually what he looks like—this is his chance to prove her wrong. Young can be replaced by any vaguely negative word—ugly, dumb, “not for me,” etc.

The guy’s response, however, falls into the 1st or 2nd category of guy we discussed earlier—the sharp, creative ones, or the solidly funny ones. He tells her, “Look, I realize you’re testing me. I’m not having any of that. I’m not going to engage your criticism head on. Instead, because I’m better than that, I’m gonna have some of my own fun, say things I enjoy, and see if you play along.”

Here we have it, gentlemen and… gentlemen. Humour is, in the end, about power. It is a struggle for power. Our dear friend puts himself in the door by realizing that being funny is about being powerful or weak, and chooses the former via his other traits of dominance and the like. The nerd above is giving in to her desires by memorizing jokes for her enjoyment. He is a performing clown, a personal amusement device, and as such, garners no respect. He understands that he needs to be funny, and completely forgets he needs have his own will.

As a result of all this, women aren’t funny. They’ve never had to develop the ability to BE funny. Men have had to defuse situations of stress (AMOG—as commonly known, laughter helps relieve cortisol, a stress hormone) or deflate fear (survived a battle/hunt), or even impress women (correctly). Thus, women have only had to develop an ability to receive humour, not create it.

Lessons Learned:

• Be funny – but only in the right way. Humour can never supplant other Alpha traits, and only supplement them.

• Women are largely not very funny, and you shouldn’t expect them to be.