The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

hacker humor


    A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among hackers,
    having the following marked characteristics:

    1. Fascination with form-vs.-content jokes, paradoxes, and humor having to
    do with confusion of metalevels (see meta). One way to make a hacker
    laugh: hold a red index card in front of him/her with ?GREEN? written on
    it, or vice-versa (note, however, that this is funny only the first time).

    2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large intellectual constructs, such as
    specifications (see write-only memory), standards documents, language
    descriptions (see INTERCAL), and even entire scientific theories (see 
    quantum bogodynamics, computron).

    3. Jokes that involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre, ludicrous,
    or just grossly counter-intuitive premises.

    4. Fascination with puns and wordplay.

    5. A fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents of
    intelligence in it ? for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky &
    Bullwinkle cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty Python's
    Flying Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements of high camp
    and slapstick is especially favored.

    6. References to the symbol-object antinomies and associated ideas in Zen
    Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See has the X nature, Discordianism,
    zen, ha ha only serious, koan.

    See also filk, retrocomputing, and the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in
    Appendix B. If you have an itchy feeling that all six of these traits are
    really aspects of one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk about
    exactly, you are (a) correct and (b) responding like a hacker. These traits
    are also recognizable (though in a less marked form) throughout 
    science-fiction fandom.