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Metahumor (Online Exclusive)

Metahumor

From Amperpedia, the free encyclopedia

Theory

You are sitting in a room that presumably has other people in it (but perhaps not), holding the newest edition of the Wesleyan Ampersand. You may have noticed by now that this week’s Ampersand is laid out so that it looks something like a cheap imitation of Wikipedia articles, which is a cheap gimmick mildly humorous in itself (perhaps warranting a chuckle, if you’re into visual gags), which gimmick in turn serves as a cheap vehicle for slightly more humorous jokes that almost invariably, when they are on the verge of falling flat, rely on the cheapest humor of all: the “fuck” word. (If you have not noticed this basic layout yet, we suggest you try masturbating and watching Jersey Shore [though not necessarily at the same time—we wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself] as forms of entertainment in the future.)

Personal Life

Pay no attention to the headings. They’re just there to distract you. You may have noticed at this point is that this article is decidedly unfunny. You may even have a sneaking feeling that someone (the author, once you think about it) is having a laugh at your expense—he is positively delighted that he’s gotten you to keep passing your eyes over the symbols he has arranged in a purposefully unfunny (and rather irritating) order because he knows that you expect this page, and the articles it comprises, to be funny, and that therefore you are both (a) more likely to see humor where there is none, since you’re in a humor-receptive state of mind, and (b) willing to read an article that doesn't seem funny at first because you assume that it will become funny later on.

Genus Acrocephalus

By now you ought to have realized that there’s something a bit disconcerting about your previous realizations, which disconcertion arises primarily from the inchoate concept that you weren’t so much realizing things as having them dictated to you—that as you read you realized certain things because what you were reading was telling you that you were realizing those things. Not only is that disconcerting, but it’s also a bit frightening, because it challenges your intelligence, and another of those sneaky sneaking feelings is arising within you, and this one has to do with the fact that you are realizing that you are at the mercy of an intelligence decidedly more intelligent than yours, which is always a discomforting sensation, but what’s more is that something which you ought to be in complete control of  (reading) now in fact has control of you, as evidenced by the fact that you’re still here, reading these words. And you consider putting down the Ampersand as a way of regaining control…but you don’t do that, because you want to bull through to the end so that you can then make fun of it and thereby regain control, because, after all, this is a humor article that fails at its purpose, which is of course humor… but perhaps it’s all been calculated so extensively and precisely that you really are caught in a dense and endless web that you don’t even see—except when I show it to you.