Humor is often described as a coping mechanism. And, over the past few months in particular, Americans have had a lot of coping to to do. There is a significant portion of the electorate that is more stressed than ever. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, that means things have gotten pretty damn funny; and in the process, we’ve blurred the line between communal joking and genuine outrage. “Jokes have informed many prominent, though certainly not all, political protests; they have also, more broadly, come to shape the way people understand the world around them. Many Americans get their news filtered through late-night comedy and their outrages filtered through Saturday Night Live. They — we — turn to memes to express both indignation and joy. Jokes, in other words, with their charms and their appealing self-effacement and their plausible deniability (just kidding!), are helping people to do the messy work of democracy.” In The Atlantic, Megan Garber wonders: Are We Having Too Much Fun? (I’m not sure I’d conflate being funny with having fun. Most funny people I know can’t remember the last time they had fun.)