I think it’s about time for me to confess: I really don’t get Gary Larson cartoons. I understand what each is about, but my amusement level doesn’t correlate with their popularity.

It’s a slightly odd, somewhat lonely feeling to see something so universally beloved and popular and feel nothing.

I don't think I've ever laughed at loud at something from Far Side, rather I've always thought of his comics as "smirk-worthy".

School for the Gifted

https://imgur.com/a/6wERHNk

Dog Translator

https://imgur.com/a/UwDJxXm

Life is less lonely when you focus more on social groups you do have something in common with than trying to latch onto everything that's popular.

That said, you might not be as alone as you think. The far side has been the butt of many bits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjfkynJ4hbI

Often if you don't get it, its because you didn't get it.

There is a famous one of 2 explorers in the jungle and the man is saying "Holy moly Loretta, not only is it still there, but look what it did to the end of my stick !"

So not really funny unless you can recall (or imagine) a moment when you had a bug on you and you ask someone to brush it off and you have that minute of like, did you get it or is it still there ? If that has actually happened to you, its a hilarious cartoon.

>time for me to confess

Don't feel that way. I can totally understand why some people wouldn't "get" (or I'd put it "appreciate") The Far Side. It's a very particular kind of humor, and it's fine that it's "not everyone's cup of tea". I, for example, absolutely loathe poetry. It's like the cilantro of literature of me, and I don't have the gene that makes it not taste like soap. ... Who cares!?!

I have this "joke" that I dearly love, that I've never met anyone who gets it. It is a bad joke, largely because nobody gets it. It doesn't imply something in me or something lacking in ... everyone else. Humor is just what you find in it. It is: "Well, I defended my thesis in comparative literature, but it seems like he's got a pretty healthy pulse to me..."

What, not a fan of 'Cow tools'? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_tools

A lot of his comics aren't great, having to create 7 per week, a fact he referenced in his comics themselves. But just the way he represented people - pudgy, cat's eye glasses, doing some esoteric thing like collecting butterflies or building a robot in the basement, is amusing to me.

It is probably down to whether you find humor in absurdity as the far side leans rather hard into this.

The humor "is" very weird, the normal flow is a strange image that is not funny and a simple caption that is also not funny. but coupled together there is something funny about the absurd connection that is made. sort of like a caption meme with better drawing. And honestly I think there are a lot of them that we just don't "get", too strange for comprehension, and we find this funny as well.

Neither did Homer if it makes you feel better.

https://youtu.be/LjfkynJ4hbI?si=rMrpX7VChQMX23_I

(Obviously not the only one if not getting Far Side comics made the Simpsons!)

I guess as he puts it here

>like the proverbial tiger and its stripes, I’m pretty much stuck with my sense of humor. Aren’t we all?

I think about it as pushing the boundaries of the minimum amount of funny to be a joke. It's not anti humor, it's not absurdism, it's not ironic. It's trying to approach the absolute least amount of whatever a joke is. Some kind of minimum joke Komolgorov complexity.

I get them sometimes but I feel like its like a lot of stuff, were hostage to the meta and everyone seems to "get" the meta so you have to go along with it or you're an outsider.

Yay humans.

I think that all humor belongs more or less to a particular time (a decade if you will). Garfield for example is very much a product of the 1980s. When humour is viewed outside of its time, it’s different. Did you read FarSide in the 1990s, or come to it later?

I don't think they are universally beloved or popular if that makes you any feel better.