They say laughter is for FREE, how come it is always at someone else's expense?

I find that if a person is going to be humiliated by being laughed at I won't do it, and I don't find it funny. Some think it's hilarious. Now I'm wondering is laughter always at someone's expense? If the humor is directed as a generalization I'm okay with it, if it's personal it's not. Example (said by a male friend by the way) who says: "My female friends say men are like toilets, they are either busy or full of sh!t." It is directed as a generalization at the entire male species, not personally at Mr Smith. But it's still at the expense of the sensitive male population. Am I thinking too much into your post!

It may depend on the source of the humor. If its indeed from someone's expense, like an accident wherein one bumps at someone and things get cluttered on the floor, awkward expressions and then the act of apologizing while gathering the cluttered items.. a stereotype for a goofy person for some people makes them laugh and even ridicule that person to add insult to injury. Then, there's humor wherein fictional situations provide. Comic strips that not only provide humor but also critical thinking on some cases. Jokes that narrate make believe characters in make believe situations as well makes us laugh. We even make jokes on known people for some reason. Just depends.. we are always free to laugh if we want to.. laugh at ourselves?

your statements quite short but really deep. made me stop for awhile and wonder... why? there are some people who make jokes by stepping on someone else's shoes. they don't care if such jokes will hurt or disrespect someone. they just think that it's funny. they are even sometimes proud about it. it's quite hard to find nice clean jokes these days without needing to make a certain person the laughing stock of the joke. anne

Sorry for coming in soo... late. But I think, that is the cheapest way of getting free laughter (of course, at the other' s expense), because it takes lot of guts to laugh on ourselves.

About you point about stand up comedians, I guess it is being a trend now for stand-up comedians for humiliating their audience to other people laugh. So this means it is widely known that stand-up comedians do this kind of trick. So an audience going to a comedy bar should have this in mind, that is, they know that they have the possibility of being humiliated.