Laughter is the worst medicine

If you are a product of your environment, and you immerse yourself in comedy, all your heroes are likely to be mentally unstable losers. If the formula of a good sitcom is that the characters try and fail, are we all destined to relive these story lines? are we all destined to be mentally unstable losers?

If you've grown up immersed in comedy, you probably spend most situations thinking of what the opposite of what you should say, or of what would everyone not expect. Comedy works best when it's surprising and unpredictable. In life, most people don't like anyone who surprises them, and most people don't have a good sense of humour. Most people prefer the predictable, and the cliche. So they're likely to miss the joke and think you're either childish or offensive. They'll often laugh just to humour you, but you'll take that laugh and keep making bad jokes. You're quite likely to be unpopular. I'm sure most people here are aware of how many of the best comedians are depressed. I won't name them.

Growing up, my heroes were people like Lister, and George from Seinfeld, I like a good hot curry, and I have a habbit of always saying the truth, rather than using any tact. How could someone like Bernard Black not be a role model? My method of finding a girlfriend was the Ross Geller method, to become best friends over the course of a year or two and never know when is the right time to move. Not particularly successful. Maybe if I could watch a a romance movie (instead of comedy) without throwing up, I might have stood half a chance as a teenager.

Maybe if I made less jokes that people took the wrong way. Id be more successful now?

What do you think? Have you guys followed and bad sitcom story lines?

Never! My hotel in Torquay is a great success, although my wife and Spanish waiter always get in the way.

I hear what you're saying, but the whole point in comedy is to enjoy it for what it is, and if it makes you laugh - great.

Your point about living up to your comedy heroes is something we may all be guilty of, but I doubt very much that they're solely responsible for various failures of disappointments in life.

We as a society are influenced by a whole manner of things. Pop culture, films, comedians, politicians, models etc - All of whom have more than their fair share of flaws.

By the way, had you followed the advice of any gushy romance film, you'd definitely still be a virgin right now! (Awkward end to a post )
Whistling nnocently

Comedy is often funny because we know what they are doing is the wrong thing for the situation. If you're using comedy to learn how to act in the real world, you are bound to fail, but that should be pretty obvious from the get go.

To be fair, if you grow up "immersed in comedy", more than in actual social situations, it suggests that there are other factors that predate the comedic immersion, which might actually explain why these loser characters of which you speak, were such a draw. This may be a case of putting the cart before the horse.

There's also an issue of the appropriate outlet for the appropriate behaviour. If you have sitcom urges, probably best to put them in a sitcom, rather trying to shoehorn them into places where they don't belong?

Just my two pennies.

Quote: Chop In A Toaster @ 30th December 2015, 9:02 PM GMT

If you are a product of your environment, and you immerse yourself in comedy, all your heroes are likely to be mentally unstable losers.

Or the cast and the writers.