Twitter and comedy go together like apples and cheese or an active person and their custom-made insoles.
This is because, in comedy, things are funniest when distilled down to A Few Good Words, and Twitter allows only thoughts equal to or less than 140-characters. As comedian Rob Delaney told The Good Men Project:
I'm biased, but I'm of the opinion that the best thing you can see on Twitter is a compact joke that doesn't require you to link to something or show a picture. It’s just, "Boom, here’s a funny joke you can immediately enjoy." There's nothing I’d rather see than a joke in that little 140-character box.
Indeed, evolutionary anthropologist Thomas Flamson, who also studies humor, says that one measure of a good joke is that it uses the fewest possible words to convey the most possible meaning. Said Flamson, during an interview with Motherboard last year: "[T]he more information you can reference without explicitly stating, the more compressed the joke is, and (assuming the hearer knows that information too) the funnier it will be."
By this logic, Twitter helps joke writers make better jokes by forcing them to be brief. You can't explain the ins and outs of a joke on Twitter, because there just isn't enough room.
There are a slew of comedians who use the microblogging network's constraints to their advantage. Check out our slideshow (below) to see 12 lesser known, but totally hilarious tweeters. You should also weigh in on HuffPost Comedy's debate about whether Twitter is bad for comedy or not. Then check out our slideshow of the best comedic rants about tech, featuring Louis C.K., Robin Williams, Mitch Hedberg and more.
