Metahumor: The Joy That Sometimes Hides in Plain Sight
Why an underappreciated source of laughter is becoming more popular every year.
Updated June 27, 2025 | Reviewed by Davia Sills
We live in an age when laughter and humor are almost ubiquitous. For most of us, both children and adults alike, there are ample opportunities for playful interactions that allow us to just “kid around.” There are informal exchanges on school playgrounds or with friends during competitive games, such as ping pong, card games, or racing model cars, as well as more organized forms—softball, field hockey, and soccer leagues, for example. Added to these are countless sources of humor available in television comedies, movies, and now the Internet. And, of course, there are thousands of stand-up performers to enjoy, with more joining the fray each year.
Assuming you are not already familiar with it, I’d like to introduce you to a concept referred to as metahumor. The prefix “meta” is used when something refers to itself. Metadata, for example, is a dataset that summarizes other data. Similarly, metahumor is humor that refers in some way to other humor. Because humor is an effort to, among other things, inspire feelings of amusement, we can think of metahumor as any attempt to amuse by referencing other attempts to amuse.
Those of you who have watched a blooper reel from a television sitcom have witnessed a common form of metahumor. The producers gathered up, edited, and stitched together instances in which one or more comedic actors (or their support team), in their effort to inspire laughter in their audiences, forgot their lines, fumbled with a pratfall, failed to pronounce a word correctly, broke character by laughing, or had a part of the studio set fail to work as intended. In such cases, the producer attempted to elicit laughter from the audience by pointing out some shortcomings displayed during the process of creating humorous content.
Today, with the proliferation of formal humor , we are witnesses to an ever-greater prevalence of metahumor. This is especially true as the battle between comedic writers and performers and those advocating for some degree of political correctness continues. To be clear, comics have always had to worry about both censorship and offending—or simply disappointing—members of their audiences, but more and more seem to be making jokes about those very things. They are increasingly getting audiences to laugh about the dilemmas associated with making others laugh. Comedians will speak about various elements of a joke, the inability of some people to “get” it, how well or poorly it was conveyed, the cleverness or recklessness of the writer who formulated it, cultural factors affecting those who might appreciate it, and various social dynamics that influence its ability to amuse.
I have collected a few examples in the following list of YouTube Shorts. Now that you know what to look for, it shouldn’t be hard to pick out where the metahumor shows up. I imagine it will be just a matter of time before someone starts joking about others’ penchant for getting laughs in this way. Then I’ll be forced to follow up with an article on meta-metahumor.
Imitation Without Flattery
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John Charles Simon speaks, writes, and consults on a range of topics, including laughter, humor, their origins and evolution, and the central role each plays in our lives.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.