Laughter in the Age of Exhaustion: Why We Are So Tired

You aren't just tired; you are emotionally saturated.

I was sitting in my apartment in Tirana last night, the wheels of my chair locked against the hum of the refrigerator, staring at a screen that wouldn't stop flickering. My background in physics often makes me think of the human mind as a closed system. We have limited energy, yet we plug ourselves into an infinite voltage of global crises.

It smells like ozone and burnt wiring in here.

Most of us operate under three dangerous illusions that I want to challenge right now. First, we convince ourselves that consuming every breaking news alert makes us responsible citizens, when it actually paralyzes our empathy. Second, we treat late-night comedy as mere distraction, ignoring that it has become our primary source of truth-telling. And third, we believe that if we just scroll a little further, we will find a resolution to the anxiety knotting our stomachs.

But the resolution never comes.

Instead, we get moments like the recent monologue by Jimmy Kimmel that stopped being funny and started feeling like a medical diagnosis.

Kimmel pointed out a jarring contradiction that feels ripped from a screenplay. He highlighted Donald Trump’s promise to bring "world peace" by 2026, a vow that lasted less than 48 hours before the announcement of a US military operation in Venezuela . The audience laughed, but it was a jagged, uncomfortable sound.

Why did that moment feel so heavy?

It wasn't just the politics. It was the recognition of the absurdity we live in. Kimmel compared the operation to the film Wag the Dog, suggesting the military action might be a smokescreen to distract from domestic scandals, like the Epstein files . But the deeper hit was the exhaustion.

We are suffering from news fatigue.

In physics, if you overload a circuit, the breaker trips to save the house. The human brain does something similar. Psychology tells us that when we are bombarded with constant threats—wars, scandals, impending dooms—our cognitive system enters a state of overload . We literally cannot process the data anymore.

So, we shut down.

This is where the laughter changes. It stops being about entertainment and starts being about survival. The great Italian playwrights Franca Rame and Dario Fo once said that "laughter plants the nails of reason" . It doesn't just tickle; it fixes a concept in place so we can finally look at it.

When Kimmel jokes about the "emphatic tone" of the White House or the cinematic names of military raids, he isn't minimizing the war . He is naming our fatigue. He is acknowledging that the official narrative sounds like a bad movie, and we are the tired audience forced to watch the sequel.

But there is a shadow here, too.

We have to talk about the "chilling effect" . This is a concept in media studies where people—or comedians—start to watch their words, not because of a direct law, but because of the pressure in the air. Kimmel works for ABC, which is owned by Disney. In these massive corporate structures, satire is tolerated only until it threatens the bottom line or cools the audience down too much.

Real satire is dangerous because it lowers the temperature.

The media ecosystem thrives on your heat—your anger, your immediate reaction, your click. But a joke that makes you think? That acts as a coolant. It creates distance. And in that distance, you regain your sanity.

I realized this looking out at the Albanian night sky. The stars don't scream for attention. They just burn.

We need to reclaim that kind of steady light. The paradox of our time is that to understand the world, we might need to stop watching it so closely. We need to let the laughter break the tension, not to escape reality, but to clear the fog so we can actually see it again.

So, the next time you feel that heavy, gray static in your chest while reading the headlines, don't force yourself to care more. Stop.

Listen to the joke. Let it plant the nail of reason. Then, turn the screen off.

The future belongs to those who can protect their peace of mind enough to actually do something with it.