![]() painter Zeuxis died from laughing at the portrait he was painting of a supposedly ugly old woman-a hilarious anecdote later immortalized in an equally hilarious painting by the Dutch master Arent De Gelder. So how did being dead become a good thing?ĭeath and laughter have been strange bedfellows since ancient Greece, where, legend has it, the fifth-century-B.C. When someone says “I’m dead” or even just “dead” in 2022, they’re telling you that they couldn’t be more tickled by what just happened. Far from speech beyond the grave, “I’m dead” has come to communicate one of the highest pleasures of life: the giddy throes of uncontrollable laughter. Yet here we are in 2022, not only proclaiming our own expiration but reveling in it. On a literal level, it should be impossible to make sense of someone saying “I’m dead” unless you’re attending a successful séance. Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get Caleb’s writing in your inbox.
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