Back in the olden days, winding down for the night with a partner traditionally involved a nice bit of cuddling and pillow talk. Today, however, the reality is far less romantic: straight men will often just roll over, grab their phones, and proceed to subject their partners to a series of questionable Reels. From stoners slurring out long dumb takes, to borderline toxic memes, the possibilities are equal parts stupid and endless.

It goes without saying that humour is subjective, and what we find funny can depend on our mood. But, generally speaking, there does seem to be a growing disparity in what makes men and women laugh. TikTok is now full of videos from girls upset about the junk their partners send them: “Why do men send you the most unfunny Reels known to man? Like there’s no way you looked at that, laughed, and then sent it to me thinking I would do the same”, rails a creator in one TikTok with over 32,000 likes.

Charlie*, a 25-year-old linguistics graduate, is all too familiar with the ritual of post-coital Reels-viewing. “When these men show me what’s on their For You Pages, I really have to force out a pity laugh,” she tells me. This isn’t just something that happens after casual hook-ups: countless young women in committed relationships with men report regularly being sent stupid TikTok memes or dragged into watching sitcoms they don’t enjoy. So, what explains the gap in our humour? 

Sumeyra Tosun, associate professor at Medgar Evans College’s department of psychology, argues that boys are often encouraged to compete and signal status. This is why, on average, they “report higher use of aggressive or performance-driven humour, which often overlaps with visually immediate, punchline-driven, or spectacle-based humour,” Tosun says, citing a 2003 study from the Journal of Research in Personality. Think: a ten-minute YouTube “epic fails” compilation featuring people slipping on ice or falling down the stairs. Conversely, girls are taught to be more relationship-oriented while growing up, “[prioritising] social bonds and emotional attunement.” As a result, we tend to prefer material like inside jokes and pop culture references – anything that “emphasises connection and shared understanding.”

Sometimes, engaging with whatever is on ‘boy internet’ can be a slippery slope. Many of the supposedly funny videos catering to and circulated by young men have a sinister edge. “Online radicalisation and digital communities show that meme culture, irony, and transgressive humour are now used in male-dominated spaces to signal in-group belonging, sometimes normalising exclusionary themes under the cover of ‘just joking’,” Tosun confirms. It tracks: many of us have encountered men who claim to have ‘dark’ or ‘edgy’ humour, when, nine times out of ten, they’re really just punching down on marginalised groups.

Tosun notes that women are more likely to interpret the men who enjoy this kind of humour as “dangerous, insensitive, or politically extreme”, rather than devilish provocateurs or lovable rogues. Product marketer Jessica*, 26, ignored an ex-situationship’s problematic banter while they were still speaking every day. “But when we stopped talking, he decided to break no contact by sending a racist reel. The sad part is, before that, I had enjoyed and even missed talking to him,” she says. “He assumed I was the kind of girl who would find that funny. I was like, 'who do you think I am?'”

Many factors are to blame, of course, but memes have long been the far right’s go-to recruitment tool. Online algorithms accelerate the process: routinely circulating incendiary content and trapping its viewers in echo chambers. With this in mind, it’s no wonder that Gen Z daters are navigating an era of “steep political polarisation”, with the partisan divide between 18 to 29-year-old men and women being wider than that of any other age range.  

So, if we sense a stark humour gap with a partner, it might actually be that deep. Steven Sultanoff, adjunct professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology, agrees that some men will “likely be hostile, insulting, and disparaging towards women they think less of. It’s an indication of [their] internal beliefs and attitudes which are expressed unconsciously.” Microdoses of toxic humour, he adds, can “create rifts and ultimately destroy relationships.” 

Maybe it won’t kill you to feign interest in a five-minute YouTube compilation of toilet humour for the man of your dreams – not everyone you meet is going to spend their time chuckling wryly at Shakespeare comedies. When it comes to humour, as with much else, there are worse crimes than being a little basic. But if his algorithm has clearly been trained to consistently spew out skits from misogynistic or racist creators – and he finds this stuff funny – then follow your better judgment. Humour, after all, isn’t neutral: what we find comical, and what or who we deem acceptable to laugh at, can reveal a lot about who we are.

*Name has been changed