Folk Humor and the Internet

Folklorists have responded in varying ways to the global culture created in the past decade through the Internet. Linda Dégh, for instance, has minimized the importance of traditional-seeming material circulated by e-mail or through websites, noting that they do not stem from a genuine live, face-to-face folklore communication. In addition, she describes the most active participants in virtual conduits "like lighthouse operators . . . isolated from their human contacts" and doubts that such people will ever "come to the point of leaving the safety of their homes and entering real relationships on the basis of establishing common grounds" (2001: 114-15). This would suggest that Internet-mediated lore would tend to reflect only the subculture devoted to computers, and not accurately represent the much broader range of traditions circulated in face-to-face contact with socially well-adjusted people. Bronner (2002) has observed that such suspicion of the Internet reflects a belief that electronically-mediated socializing is "inauthentic because it is not rooted in place or ethnic background," the usual emphases of folkloristics. Further, because it is based on technology, it represents a social force seen as destructive of folk culture, if we define this concept in terms of "face-to-face interaction, close settlement, orality, and generational ties."

By contrast, John Dorst (1990) and Bruce Lionel Mason (1996) have argued strongly for considering the computer-mediated networks as an "active folkloric space," in which the lack of traditional boundaries gives users the opportunity to create a rich variety of new traditional forms. Mason argues for considering such conduits as a virtual space analogous to the sense of locality that folklorists normally emphasize. In fact, Internet users frequently use such a metaphor, and their interaction is governed by a set of social rules usually called "netiquette." Often such rules are implied rather than stated, just as face-to-face interaction reflects implicit social rules of communication. However, Mason stresses, using the Internet as a resource requires training in a new set of tools and a considerable commitment of time and energy.

Nevertheless, Alan Dundes and Carl A. Pagter argue that the increased use of personal computers has indeed brought "a new generation of folklore" into being. Particularly in the realm of workplace humor, they observed, individuals increasingly have used e-mail and fax to circulate jokes of the sort previously passed on in the form of typed or photocopied texts. This position is supported by Dorst, who notes that the decentralized nature of computer networks allows individuals to appropriate structures originally owned by a dominant culture and to use them to express criticism of these hegemonic forces (1990: 187). The ubiquity of computers that, as Dundes and Pagter note, "have the technical capacity to generate graphic materials which previously could not be composed outside of professional print shops (1996: xiv) has accelerated the "anti-hegemonic impulses" that Dorst says underlie many computer-mediated traditions. With computer communication becoming part of the daily routine for all generations, that is, we can expect such increasingly sophisticated technology to take an increasingly important role in the transmission of folk culture.

But such a development, Dorst admits, demands that the scholar reconsider many of the stereotypes with which one has previously approached the field. In the face of such traditions, he says, we folklorists must face

the possibility that we are in the historical moment that marks, not the end of folk culture or the vernacular mode of production, but the end of that discursive practice which sustains the distinction between the vernacular, the folk, the marginal, and so on, on the one hand, and the dominant, the mainstream, the official, the mass, on the other (1990: 189).

Just as the World Wide Web has made global publication of information immediately within the realm of every individual willing to master its strategy, so computer-mediated communications have made the formal distinctions between official and informal communication more and more difficult to discern. In fact, Dorst suggests, such a blurring of folk and mainstream is central to the development of topical jokes, which as a genre appropriates mass media imagery in order to challenge official definitions of reality. In this way, such a joke cycle "reproduces or mimics the distinctive operations of the reigning hegemony" even as it parodies it (1990:185-86),

Since this was the first international media disaster in which the Internet played a role in generating and circulating humor, it provides us with a chance to see how the increasingly global nature of information conduits has changed the literal form of humor genres. The scope of the data base used in this paper is broad beyond easy description, and it is revealing to see how broadly WTC humor cut across it. A sampling of a hundred postings of the first humorous item to become widely popular ("George W. Bush's Speech," to be discussed below) showed that it did come up, as one would expect, on several message boards focused on humor. Nine of its appearances were on boards such as alt.comedy, alt.tasteless.jokes, and rec.humor.⁴ But the item appeared just as frequently on boards focusing on serious aspects of the terrorist attacks as well, such as alt.current-events.wtc-explosion, alt.religion.islam, and rec.aviation.military.⁵

Most surprisingly, the speech appeared even more often on a broad spectrum of forums devoted to virtually the whole range of interests. At least thirty eight of its appearances were on message boards devoted to topics having nothing directly to do with humor or terrorism. Participants' interests ranged from fundamentalist Christianity (alt.christnet), to sports (alt.sports.hockey.nhl.ny-islanders), to American soap operas (alt.tv.days of-our-lives), to coping with chronic diseases (alt.support.mult-sclerosis). This sampling does reference topics typical of a young, computer-focused population (such as alt.games.delta-force [a popular computer game] and rec.music.phish [an alternative rock band]). But it also includes many other interests typical of older, more conservative subcultures (e.g., rec.autos.sport.nascar [American stock car racing], and alt.fairs.renaissance). A significant number of these dealt with international cultures not directly involved in the conflict, including Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia.⁶ Thus WTC jokes affected a population much broader than conduits narrowly focused on participants' interest in topical jokes as such. Message board searches genuinely do examine a broad spectrum of English-speaking tradition-bearers, and not simply an inbred, self-selected group of computer enthusiasts.

This breadth also makes reactions to ethnic stereotypes more complex: when one can be sure that the Other is not listening, there is no check to the extent to which one can marginalize Outsiders. But now, given the increasing ability of non-Americans and ethnic minorities to access the Net, there are no automatic Outsiders. Old "camel-rider" and "rag-head" stereotypes from Desert Storm (and presumably from the Iranian Hostage Crisis of still earlier) arose from high-context, hermetic conduits. Yet such stereotypes still circulate, for new reasons. In some cases the relative anonymity and isolation that the Internet provides may encourage some persons to circulate such material, even though it may offend, because those offended have no easy way to retaliate against the perpetrator. In others, though, as we shall see, the use of such stereotypes may be ironic, a way of adopting an ignorant persona that in itself is intended as the butt of humor.

To be sure, message boards are only one part of the complex set of conduits over which WTC jokes sped. E-mail listservs, or arrangements by which individuals can subscribe to receive messages on given topics, are not as easy to search, although they too were important in passing on WTC humor.⁷ Likewise, web-based forums also played a role in posting and circulating items. And the increasing popularity of online journals, in which ordinary citizens post their reactions to daily events such as the reaction to the strikes, give us yet another window to see how humor was seen by many people.

The message boards, however, give us a convenient sampling of dynamics that doubtless obtained in personal e-mail and other forms of transmission. In my 1991 article on Challenger disaster humor, I decried the lack of detail in most disaster joke analyses, which were often based on single, normalized joke texts accompanied with vague and subjective comments on their relative popularity and dates of emergence. At that time I suggested a methodology involving repeated sampling of a population with survey instruments, to document the multi-wave properties of a joke cycle. The availability of archived message boards makes this cumbersome methodology unnecessary and immediately provides us with verbatim texts in the context of more complicated virtual conversation, which can be reproduced along with the exact dates and times of each posting. In addition, it allows us to pinpoint what we might call the risible moment in the aftermath of a given disaster: that is, the point at which making and passing on jokes provokes laughter and provides social rewards that outweigh the social risks of being thought sick or insensitive. Previous folklore research has been limited to collecting and documenting successful jokes, and only after they had emerged and come to folklorists' attention. Now, an Internet-enhanced collection allows us a time machine, as it were, where we can observe what happens in the period before the risible moment, when attempts at humor are unsuccessful.

Folkloristic observations tend to focus on the most frequently forwarded ecotype of a joke. The availability of contemporary message board conversations allows us, with luck, to trace these jokes back to a period in which they were still being formed in conversation. In many cases, I found, extremely successful items of humor in fact arose well before the risible moment, and in a form visibly different from the ecotype that became familiar during its peak popularity. Thus the purpose of this essay is both to test a series of hypotheses made about disaster humor and also to suggest the possibilities of Internet-enabled research into ephemeral folklore of all kinds.

Indeed, WTC humor emerged in a series of waves, and the availability of material from many English-speaking contexts allows us to see how American-based and foreign-based disaster humor varied. We will look first at the material during the "latent period," the time when in the wake of the attacks humor was considered inappropriate. Then we will look closely at three overlapping waves, two American, one British, that illustrate the varying stages of adjustment to the tragedy and the social tensions it caused. Finally we will look at humor that behaved in a less emergent way and remained popular even after the crisis seemed ended in most observers' eyes. This includes the single genuinely international WTC joke, one that arose in the antipodes but proved equally successful in both Great Britain and in America. continue

Page Notes

4.Also alt.comedy.british, alt.comedy.improvisation, alt.comedy.standup, alt.humor, alt.humor.parodies, and no.kultur.humor.

5.Also alt.america, alt.firefighters, alt.politics.bush, alt.war, nyc.general, soc.culture.afghanistan, and talk.politics.mideast.

6. Also alt.autos.4x4.chevy-trucks, alt.conspiracy.jfk [conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy], alt.dss.hack [computer programming], alt.fan.tom-servo [American TV cult show Mystery Science Theatre 3000], alt.music.van-halen, alt.prophecies.nostradamus, alt.strange.days [American cult science-fiction movie], alt.windows98, alt.writing, misc.fitness.weights, misc.survivalism, misc.transport.trucking, news.admin.net-abuse.sightings, rec.games.pinball, rec.boats, rec.motorcycles.dirt, rec.photo.equipment.35mm, rec.sport.pro-wrestling, rec.woodworking, rec.models.scale, and rec.games.pinball. Boards dealing with other cultures included alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox, soc.culture.cuba, soc.culture.czecho-slovak, soc.culture.dominican, soc.culture.indian, soc.culture.irish, soc.culture.polish, and soc.culture.russian.

7.FOLKLORE, NEWFOLK, and PUBLORE, for instance, were three listservs for professional folklorists through which I received material for this paper.

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