Humor, like ritual, may sometimes license otherwise offensive insults. When and why? The special genre of insult humor, including roasts, is considered along with Freud's account of the role of collusion in tendentious humor broadly conceived. When is it wrong to laugh? Satire, teasing, and bullying sometimes take the ridicule in insult humor to the extremes of aggression.
Keywords: humor, license, offensive, roasts, Freud, collusion, tendentious humor, laugh, satire, teasing, bullying, ridicule, aggression