Christopher Duffy

And part of that is because then there's a pause, a natural pause, which lets people fill the pause with their laughter.

And so you need that space that laughter can fill into.

And actually, even in regular conversation, if you look at where laughs happen, they so often happen as kind of this social lubricant that

fills the empty spaces and erases any awkwardness.

Another piece of the math of comedy, this is one of the most classic comedy rules, is the rule of three.

So a lot of really funny things are patterns.

And the simplest way to establish a pattern is you bring something up once, you bring it up again, and then the third time, it's a pattern, and it's the funniest time when you bring that thing up the third time.

If you watch sitcoms, if you watch funny movies, you will notice this happening all the time, that something gets brought up once, it gets brought up a second time, and it's funny, and it's really funny the third time.

And again, for reasons that I don't think anyone can exactly pinpoint, it's not as funny if you bring it up a fourth time or a fifth time.

It kind of has diminishing returns.

So there's this really incredible maximum satisfaction rule of three.

And then there's all sorts of other pieces of like comedy math for how what those three should be, because you generally want things to escalate.

So like, hey, I'll see you at the store.

Hey, I'll see you at your wedding.

Hey, I'll see you at the president's inauguration.

Right.

Like those are three escalating things.

It's typically funnier to go up like that.

But if you go too fast, then it's kind of

the joke doesn't really make sense if you go say like all right i'll see you tomorrow at your house i'll see you tomorrow on the moon there's not really many many places to go from there right like what's more absurd than the moon so this is sometimes referred to in like the comedy math as uh you you want to take the local train to crazy town not the express