Politeness Strategy as Humor Etiquette in Crazy James’s Humorous Postings on YouTube

Today’s Internet users engage in humorous exchanges on a daily basis, and the risk of misunderstanding extends from personal interactions to broader societal implications – from workplace collaboration breakdown to cross-cultural diplomatic frictions to algorithmic amplification of polarized humor communities. This urgency requires us to decode the contextual alchemy of humor through interdisciplinary synergies that bring together sociolinguistics, media ecology, and conflict resolution research. In this context, we analyze the language of YouTube creator Crazy James, apply Bauman’s behavioral theory and Brown & Levinson’s politeness theory to study how humor and politeness jointly construct online identities, and investigate whether humorous utterance is a politeness strategy or a potential conflict trigger. Using a hybrid approach, we quantify the video language of Douyin blogger Crazy James, summarized as instances of polite and impolite humor. This paper will combine the context of the blogger’s content, audience perception and performance style to analyze the politeness strategy embodied in Crazy James’s humorous YouTube microblog as humor etiquette. Our results highlight the impact of blogger language on audience diversity and cultural recontextualization under platform norms, suggesting practical strategies for humor grooming across digital and cultural boundaries to promote inclusive, context-sensitive communication.