Here's what makes satire so funny, according to science

[Judi Lynn]

An analysis of The Onion headlines reveals the mechanics of humor writing
BY MARIA TEMMING 2:39PM, FEBRUARY 1, 2019

HONOLULU — Good news for aspiring satirists: Scientific analysis of real and joke headlines has uncovered a hack for writing witty one-liners.

To identify the secret ingredients of satire, researchers compared farcical headlines with nearly identical, but unfunny headlines. The investigation, presented January 31 at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, revealed a strategy for changing words in serious statements to make them satirical. The technique could help AI write its own jokes or distinguish satire from fake news (SN: 8/4/18, p. 22).

The researchers compiled a dataset of satirical and serious headlines using the online game Unfun.me, where players edit humorous headlines from the satirical publication The Onion as little as possible to make them serious. These tweaks “put a finger onto the exact switch that induces the humor,” says Robert West, a computer scientist École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. He and coauthor Eric Horvitz, director of Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash., amassed about 2,800 serious versions of nearly 1,200 headlines.

Most of the joke headlines followed a common logical structure, which West and Horvitz call “false analogy.” Words switched between spoof and serious headlines share a crucial similarity, as well as a fundamental difference.

More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/onion-headlines-could-teach-ai-what-makes-satire-funny?tgt=nr