One Liner Comedy Delivers a Punch (Line)

Everyone loves to laugh. That’s one of the reasons one liner comedy is so effective – it makes people laugh, and very quickly at that. The grandfather of the one liner himself, Henny Youngman, had people in stitches when he recited his famous line, “Take my wife – please!” Another historical one liner was the esteemed comedian Rodney Dangerfield.
One line comedy has progressed through the years to become more sophisticated yet while still maintaining its brevity. It has become so much more than that other, oft-repeated joke, “I just flew in from Atlanta and boy, are my arms tired.”
Modern comedians today certainly know how to wrap their tongues around one-liners. Comedians and comediennes like Mitch Hedberg or Wendy Liebman, for example. They have mastered the art of managing to be totally hilarious in 25 words or less.
Being able to rattle off a joke, pun, or one liner is difficult. It requires you to be able to get people to chuckle, laugh, and guffaw at just a few words. Not an easy task. With the creation of Twitter, people have had to learn how to hone their one liner skills, because with twitter, you only have a short amount of space to say something really funny. Long-winded diatribes may be humorous, but they won’t fit in the format of a Tweet, so you have to be careful.



Many people cringe or wince when they hear a one liner joke. And often the joke is followed by a sheepish “Bah dum bum.” One liners can be an acquired taste, and they are not for everybody. Many people believe that today, the art of joke telling is becoming a dying tradition, but again, there are a few comedians like Zach Galifianakis who would argue with that.
But again, with email being a preferred method of communication, one liners are enjoying a resurgence in that medium. One survey found that 40 percent of adults today would much rather tell a joke via email than do it face-to-face. And this trend is probably even more true when it comes to new social media forms of communication like Twitter or Facebook.
In this digital age, people are always talking about wanting things faster. It’s true – the pace has picked up and people are exhibiting shorter attention spans. This makes one liners perfect for that. No one has to sit through lengthy joke or storytelling, they can just let the zingers roll in, because one liner jokes tend to be the kind of jokes that can stand alone.
One sad fact that another survey found was that Americans are laughing less. In 1950, they chortled an average of 18 minutes a day. Today, the guffaw level is down to a measly six minutes per day. What does this tell us? It tells us that the world needs more one liners.