the best is when you're not allowed to laugh, let's say in a class room, or in the office during a meeting. the suppression makes the urge even bigger.
In social situations it's very rare for people to actually laugh at something funny, it's a kind of social lubrication.
Few things more disgusting than watching work colleagues outside the pubs after work doing that laugh, hahahahah, why am I drinking with these cunts I spend all week with in that fucking office that I hate hahahahaha
So true. Confluence, innit. Is the laughter in the eyes or not? Social lubrication, forming bonds, and/or often avoidance of feeling. Many a tragic tale is told as comedy.
What I can't tell is how culturally determined this is. It seems to exist in most cultures I've seen.
trump never laughs. think about it, he never does.