Camilla Vásquez's recent monograph is a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of research on users’ creative humour construction on the internet, specifically on social media. Her point of departure is that creative humour cannot be ‘dismissed as silly or trivial’ since it is ‘far more effective at achieving mass distribution than… serious informational content’ (13). Therefore, she sets out to discover what makes various ‘stylized performances’, in Bauman's sense (19), so appealing to general audiences. At the same time, Vásquez's investigation does contribute to the research on humour not only as a social glue that fosters affiliation and solidarity among anonymous users but also as a vehicle for ‘serious’ meanings (see e.g. Demjén Reference Demjén2016; Dynel & Poppi Reference Dynel and Poppi2018).

In chapter 1, Vásquez describes the notion of creativity (see e.g. Carter & McCarthy Reference Carter and McCarthy2004; Jones Reference Jones and Jones2012, Reference Jones2016; Carter Reference Carter2016) and lists some formal realisations/discourse strategies of creative language. What needs to be stressed is that these forms (e.g. polysemy or hyperbole) are not exclusive to humour. Additionally, humour often transcends these forms, as borne out also by Vásquez's data analyses, as well as the overview of previous research on creativity (and humour online), which she gives in chapter 2. She reports both on older works, mainly books, about creativity after the advent of the internet, and on a selection of recent works on creativity in the Web 2.0 era, except the research relevant to the practices she discusses in the three chapters that follow. Given the plethora of publications on creative humour on social media, this overview could not possibly be exhaustive, but it gives the reader an idea of the diversity of the relevant research, besides the book's foci of attention.

Vásquez presents the fruit of her own empirical labour in chapters 3–5. Rather than addressing the well-entrenched forms of humour, such as memes, on which much ink has been spilt from various perspectives, she focuses on phenomena that have not been widely acknowledged or investigated yet (but see Skalicky & Crossley Reference Skalicky and Crossley2015; Highfield Reference Highfield2016; Vásquez & Creel Reference Vásquez and Creel2017; all quoted in the monograph), which is an unquestionable merit of the book. Specifically, in the three consecutive chapters, Vásquez examines qualitatively select specimens of three interesting humorous genres: novelty Twitter accounts (which deploy, and sometimes blend, the voices of diverse real personae or imagined/absurd individuals and entities), Tumblr chat posts (which also merge the voices of imagined individuals in fictional interactions), and parodies of Amazon reviews (which users duly take up on in their replies). As she discusses the data sampled from her corpora, the author elaborates on their specific characteristics (e.g. the format and the rationale behind the Shit Academics Say Twitter account). Most importantly, Vásquez explores different facets and features that she has found salient in her data, namely the recurrent topics and formal components of the selected genres (e.g. multimodality of some novelty accounts; youth culture, register incongruity, popular and digital culture references, and political themes in Tumblr chats; and the features distinguishing parodic reviews from ‘legitimate’ ones).

Vásquez expands on select examples from her dataset in a clear manner, neatly depicting their workings without any superfluous jargon. Many descriptions are anchored in the Bakhtinian notions of voicing, heteroglossia, and polyphony. However, some other crucial notions coinciding with categories of humour would have benefited from some explanation and references. For instance, imagined scenarios/interactions involving different voices on Tumblr are reminiscent of online joint fictionalisations (Tsakona Reference Tsakona, Tsakona and Chovanec2018), which Vásquez does mention, but the relevant phenomenon of joint fantasising (also online) has received more attention (e.g. Chovanec Reference Chovanec, Chovanec and Ermida2012). The same applies to the notion of humorous self-deprecation, which is brought up in many places and might have been embedded in the existing literature to buttress the argumentation (see Dynel & Poppi Reference Dynel and Poppi2019b for discussion and references).

Generally, my only quibble is the treatment of previous humour literature, which is somewhat limited and should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt as far as humour theory is concerned. Vásquez presents the well-entrenched script-opposition approach as capturing the production process, and the incongruity-resolution framework as lying at the heart of humour reception. However, the two approaches are actually competing theories of the workings of humour understood as a communicative product, and hence both production and reception processes. (Incidentally, some scholars do bring the two approaches together on the assumption that script opposition/overlap is a version of the incongruity theory of humour.) Additionally, incongruity, a term that echoes across the chapters in the descriptions of various examples, is not really defined, and neither the original proponents of the incongruity-resolution framework nor key contemporary scholars are quoted (for an overview, see Martin & Ford Reference Martin and Ford2018), whilst only a few random references are provided. Importantly, rather than viewing incongruity as a cognitive/psychological mechanism (e.g. Suls Reference Suls, Goldstein and McGhee1972; Forabosco Reference Forabosco1992), Vásquez seems to regard it as capturing a range of textual/formal properties (see e.g. Dynel Reference Dynel and Dynel2013) specific to the types of humour at hand, such as incongruity between registers or two parts of a jocular text based on thwarted expectations. However, these small sins of omission can be redeemed inasmuch as Vásquez focuses primarily on creativity, rather than humour theory, and the reader only needs to be aware that some further reading may be in order. Otherwise, the guidance that Vásquez gives the reader is commendable.

The book is written in an appealing style devoid of otiose academic jargon. Vásquez grabs readers by the hand, leading them through her discussions of previous literature and the research she has conducted. She also presents the (logical) structure of each chapter and reiterates her central premises and claims in the course of the book. All of this makes the monograph a valuable resource for students. What they will find useful is also the elaboration of the rationale for the studies and methodological considerations, in tandem with notes on ethics, all of which come (rather unconventionally) in the ‘Conclusions’ (chapter 6) as if with the benefit of hindsight.

Although Vásquez signposts a few directions for future research in chapter 6, only time can tell what will deserve to be studied in the years to come. Each day brings new specimens of human creativity, and new humorous practices followed by vast communities keep arising on social media, facilitated by their technological affordances (see e.g. Demjén Reference Demjén2018 on a running joke on a cancer forum, or Dynel & Poppi Reference Dynel and Poppi2019a, Reference Dynel and Poppi2020 on RoastMe). Human creativity is unbounded, which is something that scholars can and should capitalise on, using Vásquez's monograph as a fertile source of inspiration.