I don't get it

[Sherringford Hovis]

I like to point while laughing. The laugher/laughee distinction must be maintained. Throw in a wink sometimes, just because.

[petril]

I work with people who will just laugh.

NTBT

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It seems a bit of a push to believe the opening poster never/rarely laughs while in conversation.

What if there's something funny (there is, there almost always is)

[bgmnts]

Nerves + peer pressure × booze = gales of lsughter.

[Butchers Blind]

Tell you what I won't do is that courtesy laugh when someone says something that they think is funny but isn't and they laugh and expect you to laugh along.

[ProvanFan]

Supreme gentlemen don't laugh

[Smeraldina Rima]

Nerves + peer pressure × booze = gales of lsughter.

One of the shining songs of the Scottish folk revival.

[The Mollusk]

I like to point while laughing. The laugher/laughee distinction must be maintained. Throw in a wink sometimes, just because.

I point at everything so that everyone around me is constantly aware of what I'm addressing or even just looking at. Sometimes I've been caught short on the tube staring into space and suddenly realise my gaze is aimed at a viagra advert or the crotch of the manspreader sat opposite me. On those occasions I have loudly announced "I WAS IN MY OWN WORLD THERE." But otherwise I will always point. The pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers has the right idea.

[rectorofstiffkey]

Any work gathering is accompanied by screeches of laughter.  All the time.  My colleagues (who I like a lot) find themselves extremely amusing in social situations.  I avoid them....  it's a very stressed workplace and I've come to believe that the laughter is a bit forced to convince themselves that this is bearable, it really is.

The worst kind of laughter is political laughter, what you'd hear in the houses of parliament during debates.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with amusement and everything to do with loudly making it obvious that the person who just made a comment is an unutterable bellend.  Forced faux-laughter always makes me feel uneasy - it's even worse than a fake smile.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Having met pancreas he too seems to be a smiler rather than a chortler. With his demeanour, producing even a slight twitch of his lip with a quip, witticism or gag feels equatable to breaking the collective bladders of the front row during a performance at the Apollo.

[idunnosomename]

Cow tools

[Cold Meat Platter]

I wonder which came first. Laughing, telly or books?

[willpurry]

http://www.cavemenworld.com/explore/the-origins-of-laughter/

[AllisonSays]

I've found that I need to do the slightly performative laughing that the OP is baffled by even more in the context of wearing a fucking mask over the lower half of my face. It's just a way to signal something isn't it, it's not the same as the genuine involuntary laughter produced by something really funy (which I find happens to me less as I get older, probably because fewer funny things happen, depressingly).

[pancreas]

Having met pancreas he too seems to be a smiler rather than a chortler. With his demeanour, producing even a slight twitch of his lip with a quip, witticism or gag feels equatable to breaking the collective bladders of the front row during a performance at the Apollo.

There was this walking tour of the cellars of Seattle that I went on, when I was in Seattle. The tl;dr is that they built everything too low and it kept getting flooded so they built another storey on top of it with some of the lower buildings still accessible. The walking tour went round these accessible lower buildings. It had been decided that it was essential for the long-term health of the tour that it was unbearably hilarious, so when they noticed that I wasn't coughing up blood with delight at the tour guide's comedic diversions, he got very insecure and started making comments about the fact I was stony-faced and probably a psychopath. I thought about apologising, but then I thought 'Fuck you cunt, I choose when I laugh'.

Mainly I save up all the little laughs and do them all at once when I nearly break myself.

[holyzombiejesus]

John Moreall's theory is that laughter results from a shift in mental state, in the broadest sense. So in your example, according to Moreall's theory, the incongruity of raising the idea of self-indulgence in the context of self-improvement (training, or indeed work in general) is enough to prompt laughter.

Personally I think's it's interesting to look at the converse of Moreall's theory - why are things not funny, or in theoretical terms why do certain phenomena which we might predict would result in a shift of mental state nevertheless not provoke a laughter response in some observers. To apply this to a specific example - one might imagine that Derek, which is written to ape comedic patterns that usually result in 'shifts', would therefore be 'funny'. The fact that it is not for many, I would propose, is a result of the fact that the 'joke'-fostered attempt at producing a shift is 'smoothed' into a non-shift by the continued, more intense, unaltering mental impression that Gervais is a huge cunt.

[Twit 2]

Having met pancreas he too seems to be a smiler rather than a chortler. With his demeanour, producing even a slight twitch of his lip with a quip, witticism or gag feels equatable to breaking the collective bladders of the front row during a performance at the Apollo.

I'm pretty sure I've made pancreas chuckle, even guffaw. But that could be because drugs I'm funnier than you.