The Trials and Benefits of Humor in Social Media

Perhaps 10-15 years ago, Iranian humor was the domain of professional comedians. These were individuals who worked professionally in the field of comedy: humor writers, comedy directors, and actors. They earned their living through humor and produced comedic content for audiences in the media. However, something has disrupted this longstanding equation: the bizarre expansion of online social networks in Iranian society has strangely ended this monopoly. Now, you no longer need to be a professional in this field to be humorous. You can be an engineer, doctor, accountant, employee, worker, student, or pupil with one or more accounts on online social networks. Of course, having a humorous disposition and sufficient understanding of the ups and downs of Iranian users' spirits is also essential. All of this can be enough for users who follow you on your social media pages to sometimes encourage thousands to click the 'like' button on your post with just one tweet. Yes, this monopoly of humor by professional comedians has been disrupted, and this expansion of the humor content production arena has shifted many standards. In this article, I will briefly show how the disruption of this monopoly has changed various standards positively and negatively and who benefits or possibly suffers from this shift. The ethics of humor and non-professional content creators Professional comedians have various red lines for themselves for different reasons. When you work as a humor producer or program maker in the media, you are certainly required to adhere to specific ethical red lines. Racial, gender, and sometimes religious issues can define red lines for you, depending on your working environment and especially your presence inside or outside Iran, which form an unavoidable part of media functions. Regarding Iranian humor, especially when we reach discussions about political issues and humorous critiques of power institutions, the matter becomes even more sensitive and complex. However, when you engage as a witty user in the virtual space, these red lines often disappear for you. You may even not consider yourself bound to any red lines. Because ultimately, in many cases, we are just dealing with a witty user. A virtual entity that can attract the attention of thousands with their short writings. Judging how this freedom and writing liberty should be managed and evaluated from the perspective of humor ethics is not easy. On one hand, our popular witty user is exercising their right to freedom of expression in the virtual space, and on the other hand, their potential non-adherence to various humor red lines can create specific ethical risks for them. This freedom of expression may lead to humiliation or insult directed at, for example, a religious or ethnic minority. It seems that the only factor that can help a virtual humorist create a series of personal red lines after much trial and error is the feedback they receive from their audience, which, of course, is not a precise and universally applicable criterion for all users. Freshness and humor content production online Perhaps one of the most important features of non-professional online humor is the freshness and strange creativity that can sometimes be seen in it. Professional comedians usually try (and are forced) to use their humorous perspectives in their work. A comedian who is creative enough to be successful in their professional comedic work and also create humor succinctly and creatively in the virtual space is a rarity. This is why it seems that many popular and creative users of Persian social media are those whose professional activities have nothing to do with comedy. Thus, by reviewing the funny tweets and posts produced daily in the Iranian virtual space, one can extract many subtle yet brilliant points that perhaps derive their brilliance from the originality and non-professionalism of their creators. Of course, it is clear that identifying and categorizing such criteria is entirely subjective and personal, but fortunately or unfortunately, the number of likes, shares, retweets, and reposts provides us with a quantitative measure that, although one must be cautious in using them as a criterion, nonetheless, whether we like it or not, these metrics also represent a significant part of the public judgment about a user's activity. The contradiction of speed and accuracy in virtual humor Many of us, especially in this fast-paced era, are very interested in quick judgments. Especially if the judgment is accompanied by humor and subtlety, its value is much greater. Professional and media humor often falls short in speeding up its judgments compared to witty users in the virtual space due to its professional constraints. They can easily and quickly produce content in response to any event without the usual media verifications. Other users, as beings extremely thirsty for judgment, respond to this invitation from non-professional yet witty virtual humorists. Here, a significant advantage and a significant risk are created simultaneously. The important advantage is their speed of action and the appropriate responses they provide to their audiences, and the significant risk is the accuracy that may be sacrificed for this speed. For example, recently, the news of preventing an Iranian and his family from entering an airport in the U.S. became hot on social media. Note! He was initially just an Iranian. Then he became a cancer researcher, and finally, after a few hours and the expansion of media searches, it became clear that he was an active member of the student Basij and an active member of the student section of Saeed Jalili's presidential campaign in the 2013 elections. The evolution of this news and its completion process creates various grounds for jokes and content creation for a witty virtual user. But are their reactions to such news the same when the individual in question is just an Iranian, or a cancer researcher, or a Basij member? The answer is likely no. And here, the speed—which is indeed their advantage in responding quickly to their audience's thirst for hearing their humorous judgment—can sacrifice accuracy for speed. Does this potential sacrifice of accuracy for speed undermine the witty user's credibility in the eyes of their audience? This is a good question that, of course, to answer it, a detailed scientific survey of internet users would need to be conducted. The unstoppable and avalanche-like growth of non-professional humorists in the virtual space has inherently shifted the standards of Persian humor and even the capacities of the Persian language for humor. The best outcome (which may currently seem like a distant dream) is that creativity, speed, and freshness of non-professional virtual humor blend with the professionalism of serious humor producers. Certainly, more discussions of this nature among media and comedy activists and specialists can turn this distant dream into an important achievement in the field of Persian content production.