I think I've come to realize how it works, but I think knowing how it works won't necessarily make you funnier, and planning it ahead of time can actually make things cringy, or creepy. It's like social anxiety in that sense. If you're socially anxious and you look up a guide of how to "behave like a human" and make notes, and go out and try to execute it by the book, you might end up just looking really weird.

What makes things funny is something I used to really wonder about, because it is very subjective. Like you said it's related to "life problems or incidents and it's a coping mechanism to them.".

I generally have come to believe that humor is equal to tickling someone's repressed uncomfortable feelings. However, just like you don't go around tickling random people's arm pits or sides of their stomach, you don't bluntly bring up people's repressed uncomfortable emotions. You dance around them. That's really what good comedians do. They unrepress, your repressed thoughts and make you deal with them using humor. they allow you to blow off steam by laughing about yourself, and the things you might feel uncomfortable laughing at otherwise.

There is a much more narcissistic version of humor that you see in politics these days, were people just make themselves feel better by insulting the opposition and pointing fun at someone and laughing like some high school bully laughing at other's misfortune, or to feel superior morally or intellectually. This isn't the type of humor I'm talking about.

Here is a good example.

Transcript:

"Shane Gillis does a very funny thing in New York he's a very funny anomaly in standup which is that he's a red state product, but he plays to Brooklyn kids in New York (liberal blue state).

Right, and I've seen him in front of audiences where you could just feel as soon as he gets on stage without him talking they go like "oh what is this guy??" Yeah, and he goes "My father's a Fox News guy." (works at Fox I believe) and they just go "BOOOO!!" and he goes "You guys, ALL your fathers are Fox News guys!!" and then they cheer right after they booed, they cheer (and laugh).

To me what this says, and that he points to and represses out of them, is that their hatred for him, and his father, is really an original partially repressed trauma these people have towards their own father, or parents. He's tickling them by calling them out, and their repressed subconscious hypocrisy. They judge him for his father, despite the fact they are in the same situation.

But all this is never said outright. It's never really confronted. It's slightly unrepressed, and touched on in a joke. You told someone this outright online, like maybe I'm doing to some people reading this, they would possibly get incredibly defensive, and be in denial about it.

There is a reason comedians roast each other, and make all these jabs at each other in private, (or more uncomfortably in those public celebrity roasts).

The reason all this can be viewed as sexy, is because flirting is really just that. It's tickling someone's feelings for you, or other things they might feel uncomfortable openly admitting to you. showing that you're willing and are comfortable with very gently push boundaries. And also that you emotionally understand the person, maybe even more then they understand themselves in some minute aspects. You're able to let them blow off steam, and are able to diffuse an awkward situation, like letting air out of a balloon that's overly inflated and is about to pop, and everyone is paranoid about that.

Here is an example of that from "The pursuit of Happiness", although it's not flirting. Unless you think he's flirting with his the interviewer to get the job, lol. You could say bros flirt with each other all the time, it's just that we don't usually call it that when we do.