How To Make Anyone Laugh

Dave Chappelle may be the funniest man alive. With three consecutive Grammys to his name, it is safe to say that Chappelle's humor works, if not for literally everyone, then at least for the vast majority of people. So in this video, we are going to explore what we can learn from Dave's admittedly difficult to imitate style. And even though getting to Dave's level might be impossible, there are five core building blocks that anyone can use to immediately become much funnier. One note. We are, of course, covering Dave Chappelle. Some people will find his jokes offensive. I'm going to bleep some of the profanity, but you've been warned. So, to our first point, Dave regularly plays several different characters. Some of these he's made famous on the Chappelle show game.

Blouses, Dylan. Dial on, dial on, dial on. And dial on because I spit hot fire, peanut butter and crackhead.

He gets his habit back in the joint. No, he's not playing. Here I come. But even without the benefit of a full costume, you see Chappelle adopt different characters as he tells stories in his standup routines. Here he is talking about meeting Kevin Hart with his son, and his son comes across with this voice like an adorable nerd.

What's up, Dave? Come on back. I was just about to have dinner. I don't know if you guys ate, but you're welcome to join me if you like. And then my son pushed past me some cold shit. He goes, actually, Mr. Hart, we haven't eaten in several hours.

Now, we have come this before, but it bears repeating when you're telling stories. Adopting the tone and mannerisms of a character maximizes the value of your punchlines, and it even makes the setups funnier. It's an easy principle to adopt, and most comedians take advantage of it.

Girls get drunk, man, and they don't even know what they're talking about. They think they do.

Hey, guess what?

You didn't even know. You know what it is. It. You're telling me someone who never hit a woman is gonna come walking and read that joke? You know, just be a. Wait a minute.

So obviously, this is something you're going to want to do when you're telling a joke or just trying to be funny. But it's not only when he's playing a comedic character that Dave's tone changes. Part of the reason that his normal speaking and storytelling is so captivating is that he doesn't speak in monotone. You can hear him emphasize different words and add different Tones when he's speaking just as himself.

Stand up. Comedy is an incredibly American genre. I don't think any other country could produce this many comedians and unbeknownst to many people in this audience. So tonight, I am honored that my colleagues are here in comedy and in music. But for us, we were trained to care. We were raised that way.

Again, this point may seem obvious, but if you've listened to a recording of yourself, chances are you don't have nearly the same dynamics as Dave. Your tone doesn't change, and neither does the cadence or volume with which you speak. So one piece of advice to immediately improve any story that you're telling, especially if it's humorous, is to speak as if you were reading a book to a 5 year old. Get into it, let yourself commit, and be silly. Most people overestimate how dynamic they sound. So this simple adjustment often will push you in the direction of more engaging storytelling, which is critical if you're going to get anyone to laugh. Now, our third point is something every comedian wants and that Dave has perfected over the course of his career. Timing. For instance, here is Dave talking about meeting O.J. simpson. Now, these aren't necessarily huge laughs from the audience, but notice how Dave gets them without even having to tell a joke.

And then, through all the gawkers, a familiar face pushed through the crowd. Here he was again. The chooks.

Imagine those simple lines read aloud by most people. Someone without good timing, there would be no room for a laugh. But the pregnant pause plus Dave's tones creates that humor, and there's no punchline necessary. Similarly, you have this iconic moment that may only make sense if you've seen Sticks and Stones. And in this clip, you can notice how the silence at the moment of maximum tension drives home the punchline.

Don't ever forget what happened to that French actor. You know what I'm talking about, Juicy Smouillier. He's a very French, very famous French actor.

He's talking about Jussie Smollett for those of you who haven't seen the special. Now, comedic timing is a complicated beast, and it's interwoven with tone as well as body language. Breaking down every application would be impossibly complex. But one simple element of timing that anyone can use to immediately punch up their humor is, is to leave more space than you're used to in front of the punchline. Most people rush what should be the moment of maximum tension and the highest mystery, essentially neutering it. So adding a bit of extra silence usually makes the Delivery hit that much harder. For example, the context of this next joke is about when Dave was an elementary school student watching the Challenger explosion on live television as a schoolboy.

Right on television, everybody on board dead, immediately presumed dead. It was so bad, the teacher looked at all the kids and was like, you can go home.

Now. This principle of adding silence to create tension will absolutely enhance your jokes, but it can also enhance every aspect of your speaking, particularly when you're telling stories. Allow yourself to slow down at the moment of maximum mystery. This requires you to be strong at commanding attention. Something that we cover in the Kevin Hart video that I'm going to link below. But you can see a normal application here as Dave builds mystery and takes a brief pause during his acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Award.

Raised me and raised me well. We had a real oral tradition in our house. I knew the word griot when I was a little boy. A griot was a person in Africa who's charged with keeping the stories of the village. Everyone would tell Grio the stories and they would remember them all so that they could tell future generations.

Now, like Dave, you can take these building blocks, character tone, pregnant pauses, and do a lot with them. And that takes us to our fourth point and probably the most common joke type that I see from Dave Chappelle, the fake out. It's when he uses his tone to create the expectation of one punchline and then hits you with a completely different one. For example, in this next video, Dave is talking about the tragedies of gun violence in America and how it needs to watch your own expectations to see how you think he's going to end things compared with how he does.

And you know what we have to do. This is a fucking election year. We gotta be serious. Every able bodied African American must register for a legal firearm.

That is the comedic fake out. His tone and language took us down one path. He pauses at the moment of maximum tension and then goes the other way. Here it is again as Dave leads us to believe that he's defending his reputation as a sober professional on stage.

The big headline, Dave Chappelle drunk on stage in Detroit. Well, if you saw it, I wasn't drunk. I had to smoke some reefer with some rappers.

And here's one more example for good measure.

I live in Ohio and anyone that knows anything about Ohio knows that even the word Ohio is an old Native American word. It means literally land of poor white people.

Now, in labeling these jokes as fake outs, prior to you actually hearing them, I may have killed the humor but if you've watched the specials, you know these are genuinely surprising and laugh out loud funny moments. So learn to do the same. Use your tone to set people up in one direction, pause briefly to build suspense, and then go the other way. It's a comedic staple and one that you can use in just about every situation. And perhaps the best fake out that you can use in your normal life is to lead in with a serious and literal tone to an obviously silly and false punchline like here. And for context, Dave is defending the art of stand up comedy from cancel culture, something that we assume he cares deeply and seriously about.

So true about this genre when done correctly, that I will fight anybody that gets a true practitioner of this art form's way, because I know you're wrong. This is the truth and you are obstructing it. And what I really wanted to say tonight, and I'm glad I get the platform to do it, I'm gay.

Obviously in most conversations you're not going to go this far. But consider the literal to comedic fake out as something that you can just use more often in normal conversation. For instance, if you're meeting someone in a social environment and they ask you what you do for a living, you can, with a serious tone, make up a silly job like a professional boxball player and then riff on why it's so stressful in a serious tone. Now, the point here is not to trick anyone. Eventually you're gonna drop that joke and give the real answer so that you can connect on a deeper level. But it should introduce a more relaxed and fun vibe to the conversation early on. Now, before I get to the final mindset, I have to highlight just one of Chappelle's joke types, which is really hard to imitate well. And I'm gonna be honest, I don't have a great tip for integrating it into your own life, but it's just worth highl. It's the comedic simile. And here Dave is using it as he talks about R. Kelly.

This guy makes more sex tapes than he does music. He's like the DJ Khaled of sex tapes. Another one like, damn.

This type of comedy is hard to imitate. To do it in real time, you need quick lateral thinking. And honestly, no single tip is going to take you there in the same way that repeated practice can. So if you want to get the hang of these kinds of jokes. Do you miss the Chappelle Show?

Yeah. Do you? Yeah. But Chappelle show is like breaking up with a girl and you still like her, but in your mind, like that is crazy. I'm not going back.

You just have to put in the time and the practice. Sorry, I don't have a shortcut for this one. So let's touch on the mindset that pulls all of this together. The reason that most people aren't that funny is because they don't hold humor as a high priority in their interactions. Unconsciously, they think that people connect over things like logistics, so they share where they grew up, what they do for work, and how they spend their free time in a very literal fashion. But the truth is, especially in a first impression, even more than the logistical truth of your life, people connect over shared laughter. So allowing yourself to be silly, not literal all the time, to answer some questions with a tongue in cheek response can go a long way. Like that boxball joke that I mentioned earlier. And in Dave's stand up you can see how he prioritizes humor. Especially in the joke that relate to hot topic issues, he touches on those issues. In fact, he touches on just about all of them and shares how he's feeling. But rather than drive his point home with a perfectly sound argument, he instead puts the joke in the driver's seat, oftentimes ending by teasing himself and dropping any pressure on the audience to conform to his way of thinking. Here, for instance, Dave doubts the claims made in the documentary Finding Neverland that was about Michael Jackson's alleged abuse. But rather than make solid points about why he doubts it, he does this.

What'S known on the streets as a victim blamer. Dang, Michael Jackson was molesting children. Well, what were those kids wearing at the time? I don't think he did it. But you know what, even if he did do it, you know what I mean?

And as we saw earlier, just when you thought he was going to make a grand political point about the importance of voting in the next election, he takes it right back to to the joke with that fake out.

You know what we have to do? This is a fucking election year. We gotta be serious. Every able bodied African American must register for a legal firearm.

The point is, if you want to be the funniest person in the room, it has to become more important than several things that many of us prize More important than convincing someone of your worldview with every sentence. More important than coming across as perfect. After all, the best joke may be at your own expense. Now I'm not saying that this is the only way to interact. After all, I've made plenty of videos about how to be persuasive if that's your primary goal. But if you want to be the funniest person, laughter must come first. Now, without a doubt, being funny can be a superpower. We naturally love people who make us laugh. We find them instantly captivating and charismatic. But the truth is, it takes confidence to crack jokes in public, especially with strangers, superiors, or someone that you might be attracted to. It takes confidence to fully express yourself without any hesitation, and. And most people lack that confidence. And that might be why they're unable to start conversations, make new friends to get the dates that they would like, or just to comfortably interact with people that they want to connect with. And if you find that you don't consistently have that confidence as much as you would like, and you'd like to build it as quickly as possible, I definitely recommend checking out our program, Charisma University. Charisma University is the step by step guided program we developed that is guaranteed to make you more confident and charismatic. In just 30 days, over 5,000 people have already joined the program and its average rating is a 9 out of 10, with over half of those ratings coming in at a perfect 10 out of 10. So rather than tell you all about it myself, I will let the members speak for themselves. Before Charisma University, I sucked at having conversations and I had low confidence around people. I am way more confident now, having gone through the daily action guides, and I can see a big difference in the attention and respect that I get. I don't think it's an overstatement to say Charisma is literally a gateway to getting anything you want in life. So thank you for making Charisma University. This next one comes from a U.S. army officer. He writes, before Charisma University, I used to come off overly serious and reserved, which got in the way of connecting with new people. Since taking the course, I have way more confidence to just go out and strike up conversations with random people regardless of where we are and who they are. It's also helped me handle body language and physical contact a lot smoother. And in general, I notice people are smiling way more when I'm around. Thank you for making it. I'm glad that I joined. And this last one is from a guy who used Charisma University to transform his social and dating life. And he says Charisma diversity transformed me from a lonely introvert hoping to better connect with people to an energy filled extrovert who makes new friends everywhere he goes. I also went from having serious girl problems to dating the girl of my dreams. Now this course also comes with a 60 day money back guarantee that is 100% for any reason whatsoever. That means you get to try the entire program out without any risk on your part. You either become more charismatic and confident or you get every single penny back. So if the course interests you, then now is the time to join. So you go ahead, click the link on the screen or in the description below and you can find out more about Charisma University. Either way, I hope that you've enjoyed today's video. As always, I will see you in the next.