that is set up as a joke. It depends upon reference to the audience's expectations on what a joke is. Breaking the fourth wall Self-referential humor is at times combined with breaking the fourth wall to make explicit reference directly to the audience or to make self-reference to an element of the medium the characters should not be aware of. Class-referential jokes This form of meta-joke contains a familiar class of jokes as part of the joke. Bar jokes Comedian jokes The process of being a humorist is also the subject of meta-jokes; for example, on an episode of QI, Jimmy Carr made the comment, "When I told them I wanted to be a comedian, they laughed. Well, they're not laughing now!"— a joke previously associated with Bob Monkhouse. Limericks A limerick referring to the anti-humor of limericks: W. S. Gilbert wrote one of the definitive "anti-limericks": Tom Stoppard's anti-limerick from Travesties: Metaparody Metaparody is a form of humor or literary technique consisting "parodying the parody of the original", sometimes to the degree that the viewer is unclear as to which subtext is genuine and which subtext parodic. RAS Syndrome RAS syndrome refers to the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an acronym or initialism with the abbreviation itself, thus in effect repeating one or more words. However, "RAS" stands for Redundant Acronym Syndrome; therefore, the full phrase yields "Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome" and is self-referencing in a comical manner. It also reflects an excessive use of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Examples Hedberg Stand-up comedian Mitch Hedberg would often follow up a joke with an admission that it was poorly told, or insist to the audience that "that joke was funnier than you acted." Rehnquist Marc Galanter in the introduction to his book Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture cites a meta-joke in a speech of Chief Justice William Rehnquist: I've often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who's been nasty, greedy, and unethical. But I've stopped that practice. I gradually realized that the lawyers in the audience didn't think the jokes were funny and the non-lawyers didn't know they were jokes. See also Indirect self-reference In-joke Intertextuality Irony Dadaism References Humour Self-reference Metafictional techniques Jokes