A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among
hackers, having the following marked characteristics:
1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor
having to do with confusion of metalevels (see
meta). One way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red
index card in front of him/her with “GREEN” written on it, or
vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first time).
2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such
as specifications (see write-only memory), standards
documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL), and
even entire scientific theories (see
quantum bogodynamics, computron).
3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre,
ludicrous, or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.
4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.
5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents
of intelligence in it — for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky
& Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty
Python's Flying Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements of
high camp and slapstick is especially favored.
6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in
Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See
has the X nature, Discordianism,
zen, ha ha only serious,
koan.
See also filk,
retrocomputing, and the Portrait of J. Random
Hacker in Appendix B. If you have an
itchy feeling that all six of these traits are really aspects of one thing
that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a) correct and
(b) responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable (though
in a less marked form) throughout science-fiction fandom.
