Fun

Fun is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment".

Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)[5] The way the word fun is used demonstrates its distinctive elusiveness and happiness.

"[15] Some scientists have identified areas of the brain associated with the perception of novelty, which are stimulated when faced with "unusual or surprising circumstances".

When it is unable to do this, the brain releases dopamine, a chemical which stimulates the amygdala, the site of emotion, and creates a pleasurable feeling that is associated with the new memory.

With the emergence of entertainment industry, fun is sold as a consumer product in the form of games, novelties, television, toys and other amusements.

Marxist sociologists such as the Frankfurt School criticise mass-manufactured fun as too calculated and empty to be fully satisfying.

[citation needed] Bill Griffith satirises this dysphoria when his cartoon character Zippy the Pinhead asks mechanically, "Are we having fun yet?"

In The Beatles song "She's Leaving Home" fun is called "the one thing that money can't buy.