1. What we learned teaching HON 394: Humor across the Disciplines By Alleen and Don Nilsen Emeritus College Arizona State University 1

2. Teaching HON 394: “Humor across the Disciplines” This is the class we taught in the Fall Semester of 2012, one year after we had retired from 38 years of teaching at Arizona State University. Don had been a Professor of Linguistics, and Alleen had been the Chair of English Education. The students in HON 394, “Humor across the Disciplines” were adept at multi-tasking. They were also adept at seeing things from more than a single perspective, so we used their insights to develop a new course: ENG 394: “Digital Humor across the Disciplines.” The following humorous memes and links will demonstrate how our students taught us to view the new world of digital humor. 2

3. The Digital World CLEVERBOT: http://cleverbot.com/ INTERNET SHOWS: “EQUALS THREE”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EwSAzHj8VM INTERNET SHOWS: “JAKE AND AMIR”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHIWsvfwcRw RELATABLE POSTS: http://www.facebook.com/DailyRelatablePosts TOP 50 POPULAR TEXT & CHAT ACRONYMS (NETLINGO): http://www.netlingo.com/top50/popular-text-terms.php 3

4. They wanted education to be fun 4

5. Student memes made us see medicine differently 5

6. 6

7. Even calories were viewed differently 7

8. History took on a different perspective 8

9. Our students had a more playful view of linguistics 9

10. Digital Metaphors MY BLACKBERRY’S NOT WORKING: http://www.flixxy.com/my-blackberry-is-not-working.htm MONTY PYTHON “SPAM”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE 10

11. …and punctuation became more fun 11

12. They taught us the difference between writers and readers 12

13. They taught us about Twilight, about Trekkies, and about Nerdfighters 13

14. They also taught us many psychological concepts like anger and contentment 14

15. Curiosity and Desire 15

16. Fear and Sadness 16

17. Love and Narcisism 17

18. Surprise 18

19. They also taught us about point of view 19

20. Our students also taught us an important rhetorical concept 20

21. Our students also taught some important sociological concepts 21

22. They also taught us about LOL Cats and about Computers 22

23. Our class taught us about photo bombing: 23

24. Photo Bombing PHOTOBOMBS: http://thefw.com/animal-photobombs/ 24

25. Sloth & Cat Tail Photobombs: 25

26. Everybody on Earth Photobombs 26

27. They taught us about yarn bombing 27

28. They taught us about the evolution of the Cell Phone 28

29. They taught us about how Millennials get their news and entertainment from the web —often at the same time 29

30. Mainly, they taught us about digital humor, some of which was gender based 30 (Eschholz-Rosa-Clark [2009]: 105)

31. Another Gender-Related Computer Joke 31

32. …and still another 32

33. Our students taught us about how errors get corrected in the digital age I have a spelling checker. It came with my PC. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss steaks aye can knot sea. 33

34. One student taught us about Facebook Humor: 34

35. Another student taught us about cell phone humor: 35

36. Cell Phone Humor: Damn Auto-Correct! 36

37. Autocorrect DAMN YOU AUTOCORRECT (Often Obscene): http://damnyouautocorrect.com/7264/video-damn-you-autocorrect-featured-on-the- tonight-show-with-jay-leno/ THE THE IMPOTENCE OF PROOFREADING (TAYLOR MALI): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_rwB5_3PQc 37

38. The teachers and students viewed cell phones differently: 38

39. Still other students taught us about memes Here is the Lazy College Student Meme 39

40. The Lincoln Meme 40

41. The Philosophoraptor Meme 41

42. And the Success Kid Meme 42