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I suppose you could argue that if one person finds something funny, then it is funny. After all, perception is reality and if that one person sees some humor, then for them the certainty of mirth exists. If you are talking about something being funny to a lot of people, then that is different issue.

Funny is also about your particular stage in life and your particular sense of humor. For example, if you play "peek-a-boo" with a baby, they may find it rather humorous. Or, at least we think they find it humorous based on their facial expressions and their sounds. Still, I can't really go up to a co-worker and play "peek-a-boo" with them. They might find it funny that I'm being juvenile, but they also may see it as a bit strange. The reciprocal is also true in that my co-worker might find a "knock-knock" joke funny, but the baby would probably just stare at me.

You could make some argument that something is funny if people laugh, but we also laugh at other things in life. We laugh when we are tickled, and we laugh at things that are ironic. In other words, we might be watching the news and hear a story or see someone talking about something. Their intention is not to be funny, but their delivery and mannerism may strike us as humorous. Or, the ridiculously of the subject matter may cause us to laugh, more out of the fact that we would rather laugh than get upset. Therefore, something of someone might make us chuckle a bit, even if they aren't exacted a stand-up comedian. We also have to qualify laughter sometimes because we there are moments when we laugh out of courtesy. Or, we recognize that something is supposed to funny and we may be able to rationally recognize the humor point. However, it still may not be funny to us and therefore we don't really laugh or "feel" like it is particularly funny.

Overall, funny is often what you as an individual find to be humorous. There is a lot of relativism in humor as different styles of entertainment can strike people differently. For example, some people find the humor of Monty Python to be hysterical while others find no entertainment value in it at all. So goes the mystery of humor.

Learn more about this author, Todd Pheifer.
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