This section provides tips to become more witty and develop a style of humor that suits your personality and sense of humor. Being witty can help you make friends, start conversations, and foster meaningful relationships. To become witty, you should be a consumer of humor, identifying the 12 types of humor from comedy movies, talk shows, and Saturday Night Live.
To sharpen your wit, be observant and keep your comments clear and precise. Watch and listen to witty comedians’ performances and focus on developing a mix of social skills: quick thinking, observation, spontaneity, mindfulness, irony, sarcasm, and a healthy sense of humor.
Expanding yourself to as much information as possible goes a long way to creating wittiness. Spending time with witty people and observing their behavior and wit can help you become more witty. Studying other people with admirable senses of humor, such as listening to comedy podcasts or watching witty videos, can also help improve your wit.
To make your days livelier and your daily life more exciting, try making a goal of noticing 5 funny things per day that happen to you through fashion, music, movies, and current trends. Learning how to be witty and funny is a journey of habit-changing, self-discovery, and self-empowerment. By practicing being wittier, improving reaction times, and landing a jab or joke at just the right moment, you can make your days more exciting and make your daily life more exciting.
📹 How To Be Witty In Conversation
Today, we’re going to talk about how to be witty and humorous. If you’ve ever wondered how to be witty and charming and how to …
📹 Bill Burr Advice – How to be witty | Monday Morning Podcast
Bill Burr Advice – How to be witty | Monday Morning Podcast Watch some funny stuff. Burr’s specials – All on Prime Video, …
There is this problem that I and many people face and I think this needs to be talk about so badly… We can’t seem to come up with a comeback at the moment we need but, when we’re out of that situation then all sorts of comebacks, sassy retorts comes flooding in our mind which aren’t of any use later on.
I’ll put it there, my e it will help someone Some years ago, i realise that i restrected my self too much. Especialy in social situation I was very shy boy in class, and i really hated when i got a good joke on my mind and not telling it, So one day I decided to improve myself and my social skill, I started work out and most importantly cultivate my wittiness. So i read book on make jokes and socializing and perusal vidéos too, and all of the best tips on making jokes are in this article Literaly, Just apply then and you will improve in few months or even weeks My best tips is to try to make connection between very opposite things (said in the vidéo) And a useful tip is to watch podcast and standups Edit: i am the famous Guy on yt comments, Who dont really speaks english ( so be indulgent 🙂
Herro 🤗 so I’m autistic and have this thing when I experience big mental breakthroughs I also shut down verbally. I get more serious. Loosey humor and have a slower speech along with poor mental recall. I’m here now trying to Relearn how to Mask for society. Because these phases really bring down everyone around me. I say this for education purposes and also as a hidden meaning thank you for making these articles. Also do you have specific advice in not over analyzing the situation?
Like Billy said “Some of the funniest people I’ve ever met were the ones who weren’t even trying to be funny.” And I can say that’s absolutely true, in my experience. I’ve had the best laughs and had the most memorable people to me that were funny.. be the ones who weren’t even trying to be. They were just natural. Maybe by what they said, or what they did. They just did it naturally and smooth. Like the first thing that came to mind and they didn’t filter it and overthink it. They just delivered it confidently. And I think that’s the best way to do it. I came here to learn something and I did. I got the idea of it.
Not saying I’m funny, but I definitely got funnier by hanging around funny people and just joining in (bombing a fuck-ton for years, as Billy says might happen, but just genuinely enjoying others ripping me to shreds for it because they really were funny guys). There are certain tracks and ways of thinking that funny people have that subconsciously I just started to get in groove with. Things like just saying the unexpected, or ripping on yourself — I mean, if you think about being on those tracks you’ll immediately come off them, but just subconsciously you’ll start thinking like the people around you if you spend enough time with them. To the point that, after some time, you’ll note where a joke can go, think of it, then your funnier friend will say something funnier but along a similar track that your mind was on — and you’ll realise hey, I’m almost where that guy is!
I think the main trick here is to just lower your filter… almost completely and seeing what works before bringing it back up. I think that way you know exactly what to filter out and the way to do this is to approach strangers and start conversations. Being with your mates is good and all but they laugh at everything you say and you already have that connection, a stranger doesn’t know the context, doesn’t know the story, YOU don’t know their sense of humour and you don’t have to put a filter in as much and I think that particularly helps with calibration, timing and witt (of imrpovisation) and bu doing so in this way you not only build confidence but it’s a data collection process to see what works with what type of people. Humour is a skill, some people have a head start but the skill range, style and technique of humour is broad… But it has to come from you first, find what’s funny for you otherwise if you don’t find it funny first, your joke won’t relfect you and it’ll come off as forced.
One thing that has helped me is practicing with word association. You take a random word and then come up with another word that relates to it in some way. Then you just go for as long as you can like dog animal mammal biology science education school learn teach ect. It’s supposed to help your brain think quicker in real world situations and when I have down time I just take a sheet of paper and fill it front and back.
Bill is wrong here. Witty is funny, similar and included with all humor styles, more the quick and intelligent jokes, at its best it is totally improvised and flows in the moment. The only way to improve your wit is by doing things like improving your sleep quality and quantity, and expanding your mind with the right nootropics or low dose mushrooms and working on yourself and your joking ability, listening to what you do or say that gets laughs and honing that while discarding what is unnecessary or what doesn’t get laughs. Bill Burr is naturally who he is, its not surprising for him not to be as good of a teacher as he is a practitioner of the craft.
For me, wit and humor are really compulsive things. My brain is very good at imagining a subject of conversation, the things associated with it, words that sound like the words associated with it, etc. When a joke bubbles up, I feel this tension or anticipation when I think of a a connection that I don’t think other people think about- and then I’ll start talking about it and in the middle of it I think of a different connection. Usually one that’s taboo or a distortion of the topic, and then I toss that bit in at the end. And I feel relief from that tension that I feel from that unexpressed connection. And that’s jokes to me, being able to take whats happening in a conversation and going in unexpected directions with it. You need a good grasp of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to make them in my opinion. For example, I was playing dungeons and dragons with my friends the other day and a character said “yes I saw the body of my father, splattered across the floor-” And I interjected “like a dropped pie” and people lost their shit.
I dont think Im as funny as I used to be. I used to be regarded as super fast with a bunch of jokes n whatnot by a lot of people around me, but addiction, health, mental health, and trauma made a me go mute for like a year. After that year of feeling sick, tired, and living in self loathing, i became a bit reclusive and “forgot” how to be humorous around people. I know the alchohol, psychedelics and chain smoking caused some permanent damage i wont recover from completely. My poor sleep and diet at the time im sure didnt help either. Im not saying all this for pity, but i am saying i know what its like to go from funny, to more reserved then trying to build myself back up again. Knowing both sides i can concur that it is a talent that some people dont have but can work to mimic or improve slightly upon. Im slowly building some of it back and I learned that it boils down to like 5 things: confidence, listening, marketing, self awareness, mood and timing. But you need to have a balance. Cant be TOO confident or else you’ll be a jerk and no one wants to listen to a jerk. Listening is important but you cant be too scared to speak up and become complacent with every opinion said around you to risk losing your own personality/identity. Marketing involves understanding your voice/presence/body type to get your content across. Self-awareness in knowing your strengths and weaknesses will help you figure out your presence to avoid saying the cringey stuff and keep up with the stuff that gets a good response.
To add my two cents, I’d say it’s about adding tact to your confidence while saying what you think. Right time, right place. And that entirely depends on the situation you’re in: you’re not going to tell a racist joke to your co-worker who seems to be a progressive with a hard-on for social reform and no funny bone in their body, buuut you might get a chuckle out of Lebron who advocates against a status quo amongst his peers, more elders, that change is a very real thing today. It entirely just depends. That said, you’re also not going to make everyone laugh nor be able to make one person laugh 100% of the time. And that’s where you can either become comfortable taking a nose dive straight into the shallow end of a pool, turning into a Mortal Kombat-special-move cutscene or learning to handle that awkard moment where you try and make someone laugh who isn’t having it with some more grace. Like an olympic diver. Practice. You can do everything from learning more words (increasing your vocab) to giving yourself reference material to recall as in my last paragraph, but at the end of the day you’re gonna an audience, and some people’ll find you funny. Some people won’t. It’s a hard thing to be able to apply broad ideas to people. Sticking to “trendy” topics, which also happen to be either mundane things like morning commutes and coffee to school shootings or the next pandemic, helps. But the caveat to the later is putting yourself at risk of being a elephant’s rear end. Identifying the right people to learn from and with helps too.
I don’t consider myself funny, but I do find that people laugh at a lot of the shit that I say. There’s no proven, reliable technique to it, but here’s what works for me: 1: If you have a good memory, use it to build up a broad frame of reference. Don’t be the guy who passes up ten chances for a perfect wisecrack while waiting for someone to set up yet another tired “that’s what she said” because it’s the only joke you’ve got. You don’t have to Dennis Miller it and go too high-brow or esoteric, but the more of a knowledge base you have to work with, the more opportunities you’ll notice to get in a good line. This also allows you to cultivate a key component of humorous observations, namely… 2: Specificity. Clear, precise references, similes and analogies have a better chance of getting a laugh over vague or generalized ones; the former rewards the listener for getting it right away, while the latter forces them to do half the work in completing the joke, which makes it half as funny on their end. For instance, if someone tells you to “fake it ’til you make it” when it comes to self-confidence, you could simply equate it to working a bad con game, or you could compare it to trying to use Monopoly money to buy a real hotel; both make the same point, but the latter packs a smart-alecky punch that better illustrates and undermines a very trite and useless piece of advice. 3: Use the MST3K method of mocking shitty movies and TV shows to help develop a sense for timing and delivery.
I think wit/ sense of humor is for the most part already built into your dna though you could probably improve aspects of it through observing others and joining an improv class or by perusal nothing but standup and comedic movies, im more introverted so dont really like to be the center of attention or talk heaps but coming up with witty of the cuff funny things to say has always come effortless for me
Often when I’m talking to people people will laugh and a lot of times I don’t understand why and I’ll say to people why are you laughing what makes me funny is I don’t know I’m being funny seriously it happens often and I agree with bill either you’re funny or you’re not. It’s something that comes naturally wit, sarcasm. And it has to be done exactly at the right time. I don’t plan it it just comes out of me. And I think often I say what I’m thinking I’m blunt sometimes I hurt people’s feelings and I say the wrong things but at the right time can’t say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I don’t plan what’s going to come out of my mouth and I’m not trying to be funny I just say it and people find it funny. I think it’s natural. Answering and speaking off the cuff. I probably could be funnier if I used it more. Or have a conversation with somebody on a daily basis who also is sarcastic helps me to be quicker thinking what is also part of me. And often some people don’t understand it’s sarcasm. I don’t know if that makes any sense to anybody. But you can also hurt people’s feelings they don’t understand you’re being sarcastic
Being funny has a lot to do with being creative; psychologists refer to it as ” creative intelligence”. I’d start with looking up psych articles on google scholar about the subject. From there, find out what type of humor best suits you; dry, slapstick, physical, etc. After that, find someone who is getting paid to do it and see if they could mentor you. After that, who knows. Hope this helps, A soon to be psychologist.
The way to be funny is to grow up around funny people, having this advantage makes it easy. Bill Burr doesn’t know what to say because he didn’t need to train to get funny, so he’s not the person to ask. It is possible to go from unfunny to funny, it just takes a lot of effort and practice, just getting out of your comfort zone, making an effort to make jokes, being around funny people and perusal comedians, eventually over the years it will rub off on you and you will become funny.
I gained some confidence a while back and I would start just saying whatever came to mind first when talking to people. No filter. And if it definitely would get me in trouble with the ladies I would just say “I know what I wanna say to you right now, but I ain’t gonna” in like a I know it’s wrong kinda way. People laughed at me like I was hilarious. Most of the time it wasn’t even jokes it was just the first thing that came to mind.
Man this hits home. I’ve no wit but I’m accused of being funny once in a while. My ego wants to know what made me seem funny and I’m not smart enough to figure it out because I want to be able to turn it like a faucet. Computer says no. So I said screw it im going to entertain myself. So I think about goofy things and when I’m too mental to do that I watch articles of Bill B, Stewart Lee, Hedburg, Wright, Stanhope et al because they make my day brighter. Bringing laughter to someone is one of the best things humans can do so who doesn’t want to? Im a yank living in Ireland and I always feel like I’m surrounded without exception by funny clever people playing 4d chess while I’m figuring out droughts! It’s joyous kind of sadness that makes me want to give something back that I’m not equipped for. So I guess what I’m saying is I’ll entertain myself and if i wanna put that out there fine but I gotta remember every comedian had their share of being hacked to pieces and the worst I got was ignored. But I listen and I remember and there’s hope I can improve. Meanwhile I take the pi.. on myself. Sorry that’s not very helpful.
You can only really learn it by trying. And even then, you have to have some innate quality with it. Most people learn it in school, because that’s literally the perfect social environment. You’re a bunch of reckless, competitive kids who have the opportunity to sit around and try to think of funny shit to say. See, usually what happens is someone starts making fun of you and the whole group gangs up on you. You can laugh it off and take the joke with grace, and that’ll be enough for you to be socially liked, but if you laugh AND are able to throw something back, then you’re a winner. When everyone is piling on you, then you’re pretty much forced to look around the room to see who has fucked up sneakers or a big nose and think of some comparison or something funny to say. It’s out of desperation, and you go into overdrive to look for something. After that, the more you do it, the more natural it becomes, and the less about self-preservation, and more about winning/fun it becomes. The only way to become funnier if you’re not particularly funny is to sit in a social situation, and consciously try hard to think of funny shit. Especially if it’s a situation where people are clowning on you. Still, you have to be a certain level of smart and have a certain combination of personality traits for it to work.
I don’t know about that, but I think that improv comedy workshops do something to your brain. It’s like you become ‘quick on your feet’ when it comes to coming up with things to say when you’re socially interacting with someone. Of course, sometimes you say something that the other party doesn’t appreciate, but on other hand, there are moments when something funny comes out of you.