A humorous study

 I, in my pursuit of laughs, have focused much of my effort on wordplay. I enjoy it because it demands much of the audience and I shouldn't be the one doing all the work. This morning, as part of the continuing series of shower thoughts, I began working on a pretty straightforward pun, but it kept developing in my head and I thought it meet not only to list it as joke qua joke, but to use it and its various iterations to breakdown the mechanism and method of the humor involved.

The joke began with a fairly standard operating mode, that of "definitions." In this style, a word is used and then the pun develops from a separate but specific definition of the word:

Some people like sunglasses that filter out light, and some don't -- they are very polarizing.

But from there, the writer can begin to explore other aspects of the line:

Some people like white bears and some don't -- they are very polarizing.

As the puns develop, they move further and further away from the original language, and often demand more and more from the audience either in the area of cultural or other literacy. They might require that the reader take logical or linguistic leaps. The punch line word, "polarizing" has 2 elements (to begin with), "polar" and "icing." Either can be seen as its own concept with its own meaning so the joke can rely on knowing that either or both are being misused. Here are some focusing just on the second part:

Some people like decorated birthday cakes and some don't -- they are very polar-icing.

The same structure can be used for multiple set-ups:

Some people like the temperature of the arctic, some don't -- it is very polar-icing.

Some people like clearing the puck end-to-end, some don't -- it is very polar-icing.

Then some of those can be combined into a more complex line:

Some people like Carvel birthday cakes and some don't -- they are very polar icing.

Because more steps are required of the audience, fewer people will make the journey and appreciate the joke for its subtlety.

We can also look at the first part, and we can move to other techniques -- such as invoking a proper noun:

Some people like when Amy was on SNL, some didn't -- she's very Pohler-izing.

Some people want to send Amy way north and others like her way south -- she is very Pohler-izing.

[though Poe is a great bit to work with, the La syllable is less so, and one is forced to use a 'mock languages' motif with "Some like when The Raven is translated into bad French and some don't...it is very Poe La-rizing" but that takes so many steps that people get shin splints trying to understand it]

Combining this with the earlier attempts we can have

Either you like Amy's cakes or you don't -- they are very Pohler icing.

Next up, we have word breaks. If the object word/words allows for it, we can split up the syllables in a new way

Some people like it when the Warsaw native shows up in conversation, and others don't -- it is very Pole Arising.

Of course, this works better as "Pole Arriving" and that can streamline the set up but that requires another layer of separation in the crafting of the punch line.

Using wikipedia, we can figure which person we would want to bring back from the dead to have "Pola Rising".

Letter swaps also work (if a pure swap, first part for second part, isn't available, we can swap out associated sounds like the Z and S sounds from above).

Either you like Pepsi or you don't -- it is very Cola-rizing

Another element of humor is "ridiculousness" in which the creator intentionally makes a mistake or goes way too far

Some people like plain cake, and some like it decorated -- it is very polar-frosting

or

Some people like bears and somedon't -- it is very koala-rising

Mix in the "eye rhyme" or half rhyme and you get multi-syllable references like

Some people like watching The Raven get skewered on Curb Your Enthusiasm and some don't, it is very Poe Larry Zing.

At this point, as they say, this guy is the limit.