Factors of humour appreciation in the subreddit r/wheredidthesodago

Résumé En

In this study, I investigated users’ appreciation of humour in the 361 posts published in 2018 on the subreddit r/wheredidthesodago, which is devoted to posts combining a GIF extracted from an infomercial with a funny caption. Specifically, I examined both formal features and content-related features that could potentially influence humour appreciation. The first feature I analysed was purely formal. I tested the correlation between the format of the post—more precisely the length of the caption, the duration of the GIF, and its number of frames per second—and the post’s success. The second feature I examined was the structure of the post. Drawing upon the broader incongruity theory of humour, I tested the relationship between a post’s success and the presence (or absence) of an incongruous association between the GIF and the caption. The third feature I investigated was content-based, drawing on the Benign Violation Theory of McGraw and Warren (2010, 2014). I tested whether posts addressing a taboo topic tended to achieve higher scores than posts that did not. While I found no correlation between a post’s format and its success, I found that posts featuring wholly incongruous GIF/caption pairings and those broaching taboo topics tended to achieve higher scores. However, further analysis of semi-identical posts revealed that these tendencies did not always hold true. These findings suggest that incongruity and benign violation are important components of humour appreciation in the posts I analysed, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for humour to succeed.