Michael Marder ponders it:
Laughing at ourselves, at the various crises in which we find ourselves, means laughing at our finitude, our irremediable weakness, the feeling of being overwhelmed and crushed by the future. This would suggest a straightforward interpretation, whereby the present laughs at the future, or, at any rate, at its own fear of what is to come. To make fun of the future is to put it under our control, if only for a brief instant of a shared explosive laughter, by mastering the fear it provokes.
(Chart by Ben Greenman)
The Dish 