Scott Dikkers has made a career out of being funny as the founding editor of the satirical publication "The Onion." He has served as the owner and founding editor of the publication and co-wrote the best-selling books "Our Dumb Century" and "Our Dumb World." Dikkers will give a talk entitled "The Funny Story Behind the Funny Stories" today at 4:30 p.m. in Page Auditorium. The Chronicle's Lucy Zhang recently spoke with Dikkers about his humor, his origins in satirical news and the success of "The Onion."
The Chronicle: What makes something funny?
Scott Dikkers: That is a very complicated question because we normally don’t think about it. But having been in the comedy business for most of my life, well all of my life really, I’ve thought about it, and I’ve actually written a book about it because I thought there is a kind of code for making things funny. I wrote a book about the very subject called "How to Write Funny." It breaks down the steps that the brain goes through to create something funny. Part of knowing that is knowing what makes something funny to the audience or to the reader.
TC: Many articles in "The Onion" have been taken seriously. Would you consider this more the result of a stupid reader or a successful writer?
SD: I would say the former. Because people tend to believe something if it’s in black and white, which is so outrageous. I think that tells you a lot about what’s wrong with humans in general. People don’t think very much.
TC: Based on your experience, what types of articles tended to get the most page views and publicity?
SD: That’s a thing that started with the Internet for us maybe five to ten years ago. We started looking at which stories got the most page views, but often they weren’t the ones we were most proud of or we thought were the best. They were just the ones that for whatever reason were passed along or had to do with something big in the news. In the past, we tried to entertain ourselves first. So stories we were most proud of or we thought were most successful were not necessarily the highest traffic ones.
TC: Have you ever avoided any topics because they were too niche specific and required too much context for the reader to know?
SD: That’s a critical thing to consider when you’re doing humor. Too much context and you have to explain too much for people to get the joke—then it’s really not worth it. At "The Onion," we’ve always tried to be as accessible as possible, meaning we want to reach as many readers as possible. So you want jokes generally to be as gettable as possible. However, sometimes if there’s a joke that only a tiny handful of people are going to get, but if they’re really, really going to appreciate that joke, then we’ll do that even if it leaves everyone scratching their heads.
TC: When it comes to serious or tragic events, is there a line that you or "The Onion" won't cross?
SD: You always have to consider whether a joke is going to be insensitive to people. We always do think about that when it comes to sensitive issues or really sad news. And the main thing that we do is we always try to make sure that the target for our satire is well-considered. We don’t want to make the victims the target of satire. But there’s never been a topic or thing that happened that we thought, "Oh we just can’t say anything about that because it's just too sensitive." Humor is a great way to deal with tragedy in life, and in many ways it's the most human response you can have to hard times. In finding humor, you’re finding humanity.
TC: If you could travel into the past, what historical (or not historical moment) would you like to satirize the most? Why?
SD: It would be fun to go back and satirize the harnessing of fire or what really happened with Jesus. Or the Roman Empire—but the problem is back then you would get killed for writing satire. It wasn’t a protected right, and there were a lot of satirists who were exiled, so I don’t know if I would be a satirist if I lived back then. It wasn't exactly a sensible career choice.
TC: How did you get into satirical writing and comedy?
SD: I don’t really know or remember. I’ve been drawing cartoons since before I can remember. I still have greeting cards and calendars that I made for my grandma for her birthday when I was four, and I was always drawing things and trying to make them funny.
TC: How did it become a professional career?
SD: I never really thought about it until later in high school when you have to start thinking about your job. It’s just all I ever did anyway, and I think I just assumed that that was what I would do and keep doing. I was never really interested in anything else—going to an office or making things in a factory—any of the regular things that regular people do.
TC: Would you consider yourself an outwardly serious, boring and/or uninteresting person who writes funny things, or someone who openly expresses his humor as well?
SD: I’m absolutely the former. I’m an incredibly boring and uninteresting person. I’m the quietest person at any party. All my humor energy goes on the page. I didn’t used to be like that. Before I got into writing comedy, I was the funny, crazy guy making jokes all the time and being silly. Because I spend my working day pouring all that comedy energy out on paper, I don't really have any of that energy left. I just want to relax, but I like myself that way.
TC: Do you believe satirical news will always be marketable?
SD: I don’t know. I can only hope that humankind evolves to a more free, open and respectful society. But I don’t think human evolution is necessarily linear. I think it’s very possible that we can revert back to thousands of years ago in a heartbeat. All it would take is a huge near-extinction level event or a third calamity nuclear war. Assuming nothing like that does happen, hopefully we’ll keep getting wiser and more compassionate and considerate. I think in a world like that, satire is a great peaceful outlet for disagreement and unrest.
TC: Why do you believe "The Onion" is important?
SD: I don’t think that I believe that "The Onion" is important. It’s there to make people laugh ultimately, and it’s important for the culture. But there’s obviously a lot more important things.
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