If I were asked to speculate about trends in Comedy and what the ‘next big thing’ might be, I’d probably tell you that Absurdist Comedy (often referred to as Surrealist Comedy) seems to be the fastest-growing style in the last few years.

The popularity of Absurd humour could be because of Millenial tastes, or the prevalence of platforms like TikTok. Some speculate that in the last ten years or so, our “post-truth” world has stopped making sense, There’s a sense of the irrational that seems to be pervasive with younger generations, who have had to discard the assumptions which used to guide our lives.

Governments are fundamentally honest and have our best interests at heart.
Hard work and abstaining from avocado will facilitate home ownership.
Money is something tangible and real.
Your gender is your genitals.
Police are to protect you.
Marriage is a sacred institution.
Happy endings are determined by merit.

It’s hard to believe now that anyone ever thought these statements were true. These assumptions now seem quaint naive Boomer fantasies from a simpler time.

Social media and streaming platforms seem to be a favourite of surreal humourists, and seem to be designed for delivering this style of comedy. There’s plenty of articles on the web about how “millenial humour” has become both dark and absurdist. I’ve seen traditional forms of stand-up referred to as “old fashioned” by young commentators.

That said, Absurd and Surreal humour aren’t exactly new. When I think of contemptorary examples of stand-up comics specialising in Absurdism I think of comedians like Ross Noble, Eugene Mirman and Noel Fielding, Before them, comics like Steve Martin and Steven Wright specialised in playful nonsense. The Monte Python team made us laugh with Absurdist jokes, Before them? Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books are excellent examples of playfully absurd and surreal humour. Slapstick comedy has been in film for as long as we’ve had movies.

One of the strengths of Absurdist humour is that almost any platform can be a vehicle for it. You’ll see it in novels and movies, songs, as social media reels and shorts, and even in good old spoken-word stand-up. The practitioner of Absurd comedy is as likely to be an actor or social media influencer as a traditional comic.

How does Absurdist humour work? By breaking expectations, much like Misdirection jokes do. Absurd comedy is more than just “anything silly,” and you’ll find that any old thing that’s a bit silly isn’t likely to get a stronger response than polite amusement. People like to say that this style of humour is “random” but it’s not as random as you might think.

Effective Absurdist humour is deliberate pattern-breaking. It implements juxtapositions of uncomfortable imagery and incongruous ideas, violates expectations and uses the reductio ad absurdum technique of extrapolating an idea to the most extreme limits. Absurdist comedy uses Benign Violation Theory to shatter our rational assumptions while demonstrating that the violation is harmless.

Absurd comedy uses Incongruity Theory to set up our expectations by establishing and then breaking patterns ”Doctor, Scientist, Builder, Fireman, Pineapple” for example. Or, even more efficiently, non-sequiturs like “How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A fish.”

It violates language with made-up words, exploiting what we’ve learned about phonetics with harsh sibilants and plosives being more effective for comedy. Inventing words or sounds gives a good opportunity to use the “funny sounds” with hard consonants (like P or K sounds) and put emphasis in unlikely places.

Absurd Comedy implements an interesting version of Superiority Theory. Instead of attacking a person or idea, it shows them up as silly. This is done with absurd juxtapositions; Putting them in frivolous or embarrassing situations takes more power from a target than attacking them.

I don’t incorporate Absurdist comedy into my own act because I’ve never been a huge fan of the style. I expected not to be impressed with it, which is possibly my own Generation X sensibilities kicking in.

Maybe there’s a tiny bit of resentment that “real” stand up comics often feel towards social media influencers who can sometimes build massive and rapid comedy audiences without ever crafting anything we recognise as jokes. Those feelings, and understanding that the comedy landscape is changing as fast as the actual world is, is something every comedian has to either accept, embrace or resolve.

One thing I can report is that my appreciation for Absurd comedy has increased since I started analysing it. We’re talking about a style that plays with all the theories of comedy, implements a vast range of techniques and works on multiple platforms. The secret to crafting effective Absurdist comedy is look “random” without actually being random, because a lot of strategy and thought is going to go into jokes that look arbitrary but really aren’t.

I used to wonder why Steve Martin, a comic famous for “silly” gags and prop humour, chose this style of comedy when he’s written so many books and essays with philosophical gravitas. He’s clearly an extremely intelligent guy, even though a lot of his act seemed childish. It all makes sense now… Absurd comedy is a lot smarter than it appears to be.