Laura Turner Garrison studies a survey of international humor that “suggests perhaps what unites us in humor is not what we all find ‘funny,’ but rather what we all find ‘not funny'”:
Gelotophobia is the fear of being laughed at, and apparently we’re all a little gelotophobic to varying degrees. Seems like a fairly obvious fact, but the degrees can be quite telling about what makes individual cultures feel uncomfortable. And if The Office is any indication, it is playing with these levels of discomfort that make for some of the best comedy.
To my mind there are three reliable forms of crude comedy: someone falling over; someone’s pants falling down accidentally; or someone farting in public. They are forms of humiliation, right? And there’s nothing we laugh more at than the humiliation of others. One mark of civilization is the ability to rise above this and laugh at ourselves when the same thing happens to us.
The Dish 