To Mahmoud Salem, an English-language blogger who goes by the name Sandmonkey (because it "makes white people uncomfortable"), those 30 years of non-stop derision -- including an Onion-esque fake news website, El Koshary Today -- set the stage for the confrontation that began January 25. Directly confronting the regime, he told me, would have been a "stupid move."

"It's easier to make them look ridiculous," Salem said. But is humor, as some suggest, a substitute for effective political action? "It's very effective," he insisted, "because it breaks the fear barrier."

That barrier began to fall not long after Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali resigned office on January 14. Egyptians roared into the street, kicking off their revolution with chants of "Hosni Mubarak, the plane is waiting!" a nod to Ben Ali's embarrassingly swift liftoff to Saudi Arabia.

The longer Mubarak stayed, the more the jokes piled up, much like the growing mound of trash in the center of Tahrir Square. Protesters renamed both the garbage pile and the toilets renamed "National Democratic Party headquarters" -- a reference to Mubarak's party, the real headquarters of which was destroyed by protesters. When Vice President Omar Suleiman denounced the protesters' "foreign agendas," young people showed up to the square with plain blank notebooks, Salem says. "Whoops," they told one another, "I left my 'agenda' at home."

When state television accused protesters of being foreign agents, paid with fistfuls of Euros and meals from Kentucky Fried Chicken, one protester filmed his comrades enjoying their "KFC": humble sandwiches of bread and cheese. And that $100 bribe? "I transferred it to Switzerland," one grinning man tells the camera, falafel in hand.

As Egyptians took to social media to spread news from the demonstrations and encourage others to join them, the humor rampant in the street made it into those social media dispatches as well. Many tweeted in English, and thanks to translation software and human translators, the whole world could get in on the joke.

"Photographs from Tahrir of people carrying hilarious signs went viral within minutes of posting," observed Adel Iskandar, 33, a media scholar and lecturer at Georgetown University. Sharing a laugh, often in real time, created "a sense of solidarity and camaraderie among those who supported the cause." Who could not identify with the simple "Leave, my arm hurts"? Or, as the days wore on and on, "Leave, I want to shower/see my wife/shave/get married."

The jokes themselves often played on or through new media and its tropes. A faked "Installing Freedom" screen grab showed files being copied from a folder labeled /tunisia, overlaid with the error message, "Cannot install Freedom. Please remove 'Mubarak' and try again." (A later version of that joke announces "Installation freedom has finished successfully.") While Mubarak is rumored to have never sent an email in his 82 years, @HosniMubarak appeared on Twitter on January 25, joshing with the shabab (youth) like an old pro. The next day, amid (false) reports that the Mubaraks had fled to London, a follower inquired to the fake presidential account after his family. "They're fine, thank you for asking. Gamal just checked in at the Ritz on foursquare," @HosniMubarak politely replied. Son and heir apparent Gamal, whose @GMubarak profile boasts "My Daddy owns Egypt," quickly materialized, as did wife @SuzanneMobarak. On February 4, amid some of the worst crackdowns on journalists in Egypt, @HosniMubarak tried to drum up a little extra cash. "I have 3 video cameras, 2 still cameras, 5 microphones, and 7 journalists for sale," he tweeted. "They are all labelled 'Al Jazeera'."