Happiness Quote by Kanye West

Kanye is describing a survival tactic that doubles as a marketing strategy: wrap the heavy stuff in a punchline so it can travel. In pop culture, “serious” is often treated like medicine - effective, but hard to swallow. Put it in a joke and it becomes candy with a prescription inside. That’s the intent here: to smuggle vulnerability through the bouncer of audience discomfort.

The subtext is more revealing. “So people can enjoy them” isn’t just generosity; it’s an admission of how attention works. He’s acknowledging a transactional stage dynamic: you can tell the truth, but you have to entertain while doing it. The joke isn’t the opposite of sincerity, it’s the delivery system. This is especially Kanye-coded because his public persona has long blurred confession, provocation, and punchline. He’ll toss out an outrageous line, let the room laugh, then force everyone to notice what they laughed at.

“We laugh to keep from crying” is the emotional thesis and the cultural context. It’s gallows humor for the media age, where pain becomes content and content gets measured in engagement. In that ecosystem, irony becomes armor: it keeps you from collapsing under scrutiny, trauma, expectation, or simply the relentless demand to perform. Kanye frames comedy not as escape but as containment - the pressure valve that keeps grief from flooding the room. The joke lands first; the bruise shows up after.