Scientists are saying men don’t fancy girls who are funny

Last week, researchers found men don’t show any interest in funny women, which is a real shame.

The study, undertaken for the journal Evolutionary Psychology, set up 50 unlucky couples, previously unknown to each other, on blind dates and videoed them having a 10 minute conversation using prompts. Afterwards, they were asked to rate their “dating interest” in the other person and researchers reviewed the videos, looking for humour and the response.

The study found both men and women made similar amounts of attempts to be funny, but women laughed a lot more in response to men being humorous than men did in return. As well as this, the more a woman laughed at her partner, the higher the dating interest was, whereas with men, there was no such correlation.

Look how intimidated those boys are

The idea men don’t find funny women attractive needs to die already, even if scientific tests like this claim to have found proof that’s the case. There’s no way heterosexual men would prefer it if their significant others were mute apart from the occasional giggle at their embarrassing attempts at humour.

The kind of man this conjures up is someone between Gaston from Beauty and the Beast and Dan Bilzerian, a guy who wouldn’t know what to do if a girl told a joke. It’s hard to believe this man really exists or that men as a whole are so insecure in themselves they find female humour threatening.

It’s unfair to suggest men (leaving aside the fact some won’t fancy women anyway) are mere cavemen who look for a responsive partner: a woman who’s seen and not heard, someone smart but not smart enough to threaten them.

As well as this, there are so many caveats to this study it deems the whole idea pointless. What about LGBT communities? Do men find other funny men attractive? Let’s be honest: this study is a mess, and so is this whole idea. Women are just as funny as men, and, funnily, have sex just as much. So if you’re funny, be funny: no one will find you less attractive for it, and if they do, they’re not worth your time.