Ful disclosure; I’m on the autistic spectrum
Same, since this is something I struggled with for a while and this thread is old I will try to give (my) understanding of humour in general and how it applies here.
Okay, as far as I can tell the root of all humour is something unexpected/surprising/confusing.
A lot of wordplay operates by having you understand a sentence one way then
Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
The surprise here is that you expect where there is a will there’s a way, and you expect “will” to refer to willpower, the unexpected aspect is that when you get to the end of the sentence it actually means last will and testament.
Comical misunderstandings in comedy fall under this, “edgy” humour is predicated on the idea that people will conform to polite discord then they break it. Cringe comedy is the same but rather than polite it’s “cool” (or whatever the atonym for cringe is.)
In this case the surprise is just that the doll looks like the daughter, you expect the doll to be some random famous character and instead it’s an image of someone you know.
This is mildly amusing but not that funny, what makes it hilarious (I assume) is the feedback loop between father and daughter. If he had been in the shop and seen it by himself there might have been a chuckle but not much more.
He shows her the mildly funny doll, she makes an unimpressed face as seen in the photo; she probably finds it a bit funny, but doesn’t want to give her dad a “win” for something which is vaguely at her expense, so puts on an unimpressed face. Having known her for her whole life Dad understands what is happening intuitively, this is the second layer of funny where the daughter is putting on an act, then it compounds because the contrast between his reaction and hers is amusing and the more he finds the situation funny the more pointed the contrast becomes causing a feedback loop.
The difference in reaction is a classic comedy trope people find funny, thats why most multi person comedy acts have someone play “the straight man”
Sadly I don’t think I can source this since nobody explains any of this so it’s all observation and trial and error
WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world 1 day ago
She looks a lot like the character overall to me
aMockTie@piefed.world 1 day ago
I absolutely agree! But as I said in my initial response, I personally would think of that as more of a flattering compliment than anything else. I don’t understand why the dad found the similarities so overwhelmingly funny that he was on the floor laughing, struggling to breathe, with tears in his eyes.
Apparently OP understood the context as a “sick burn,” and I’m assuming the dad was laughing for some sort of similar mean spirited reason. I just feel like I’m out of the loop and I’m not understanding why the comparison is funny or any kind of burn.
papalonian@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Full disclosure, am also on the spectrum so I may have got some things wrong here, but I think I can explain.
People think it’s funny when other people look like other things, and get frustrated when they themselves look like other things. I think this stems from the fact that once the comparison is made, it is hard to take the person seriously without thinking of the other thing.
Weird analogy that just came to mind: imagine you book a tour to some World War II museum. You get there, and your groups tour guide is dressed as spongebob, or Spider-Man or something. They’re an excellent tour guide, and know their shit, but you’d have to be thinking to yourself, “why is Spider-Man telling me about some of the worst crimes against humanity?”, and that thought would be kinda funny.
Now imagine your 20-something year old daughter is bantering with you and teasing you about your old man/ lady style. In the middle of the conversation, you see an ad for Encanto on the TV, and realize that your daughter looks exactly like the cartoonish and silly (not “stupid” silly that’s just how I describe the style) character in the movie. And you say, “why am I getting roasted by Mirabel?”, that’d be pretty funny.
“Roasting” and “sick burns” are one of those “insulting each other as friends” things NTs are more skilled at doing and understanding than we typically are. It can of course go too far or be taken the wrong way but I don’t think the person in the OP felt genuinely wronged or that the joke was mean spirited.
I hope I could help! Let me know if you’re still questioning it, and maybe I can try to clarify