Buy Laughter (Will You?)

5th May 2025

"A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life"
William Arthur Ward

Good humor is the second thing to build a close relationship with me, the first one is good food. With social media, these days it is so easy to share laughter, all thanks to the content creators who put in effort to make it. The task of sharing humorous content on social media is not as easy as it looks. Your friend may have shared something and there could be multiple possibilities behind sharing it, you have to be smart enough to pick the exact reason so that you both can discuss and have a good laugh on the same point later. The other difficulty in this process is uniqueness, relatability, and non-repetitiveness in sharing the content. There are a few jokes that never get old and only make you laugh whenever you see/hear them. But that is in your case, the other person may expect uniqueness. And if you send them a reel they have already shared with you in the past, then they may even question the fundamentals of this humor-sharing relationship - integrity; "Did you even see what I shared last week? Then why did you share the same reel with me a week later?", are sample questions you may get to hear. Your humble defensive response, "I forgot", won't work then. So better keep a worthy and convincing reply handy!

As a writer, I have always found it difficult to write good humor. And looking at the current scenario, I am not keen on developing my humor writing skills anyway. It is normal to find a joke offensive when the rest of the audience is whole-heartedly enjoying it. It is good to have an opinion, but it is important to know where it should be shared and even crucial to learn where it should be demanded to be practically applied. If we keep finding logic in everything, we will probably stop smiling and laughing. A huge respect for all those who still dare to stand amidst the crowd and put in efforts to make them laugh. I wish to attend a stand-up comedy show Live and I hope that happens soon. However, my middle-class mentality alerts me, "Why do you buy laughter when it is being delivered in your hand for free?"



I am sharing a list of stand-up comedians whose videos have helped me sail through the tough days in my life lately.
1) Gaurav Gupta: His jokes on the Baniya community are too good, real, and hard-hitting. There is no particular one that I can choose, his act left me with pain in my cheeks every time I watched.
2) Abhishek Upamanyu: The way he delivers humor is crazy. One act of his, the one in which he mentions being recruited in the gulf because of the recommendation of a family friend, is hilarious.
3) Rupali Tyagi: She talks about gender differentiation and patriarchy humorously. It is only after her act about "returning home late from work", that this topic of the job being a job, whether it is a man or a woman and whether it is a stand-up comedian or a corporate employee secured a clear place in my head.
4) Jaspreet Singh: He wins hearts easily with his innocence. One of his acts in which he talks about trinket boxes for keeping jewelry safe is the one I like the most.
5) Shraddha Shah: This woman has convinced me to retain my faith in good humor. She makes clean and relatable humor. Bulbul Vidya Mandir series, one character family humor where she alone plays all the 3 characters, corporate humor acts, and to top it all her Marathi accent is nailed to perfection.
Recently, Aarya is one content creator whose content I am laughing crazily about. She has been putting it up on reels only. I hope she explores a little bigger format and comes up with something bigger.
Do let me know the names of stand-up comedians whose acts make you laugh. Lastly, I would like to remind you all that it is easy to disappoint someone, but it requires a lot to make them laugh. It is not impossible and there is no harm in trying, that's what I feel.

This post is a part of "The Chuckle Chronicles Blog Hop" hosted by Sukaina Majeed and Manali Desai under #EveryCovnersationMatters.