At a wine tasting, I was chatting with two women who are friends.
Me (to one of them): How did your friend entice you to come to this event?
Woman: She told me I was coming.
Laughter.
Type of joke: ?. Actually, it was the truth. Even armed with my idea that laughter is caused by sudden pleasure I still find it very hard to say why we laughed. How odd this is! Laughter is a big and important part of life. Visible, common, highly desirable — yet mysterious.
I think this is funny because using the word “entice” sets up the expectation that the first woman used persuasion to convince the second one to come. This is the kind of interaction we view as normal between friends. That expectation is violated when the second woman implied she was ordered to come, not persuaded. A lot of comedy seems to depend on setting expectations and then violating them. Now, why THAT is the case is mysterious.
Good answer, David. I also think we find it funny when an adult is ordered around — treated like a child. It is another sort of incongruity.
In this case, it may not have been the quality of the joke, but the intended social interaction. See this article:
https://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/laughter/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=