Bureaucratic Reification of Folk Types

Bureaucratic Reification of Folk Types holds that an Inscrutables panel derives humor by treating an informal cultural type, saying, or social fiction as though it were governed by official procedure, hierarchy, and administrative continuity.

Under BRFT, the fool gets a job title, the insult gets a promotion ladder, and mockery gets human resources. The principle complements PCAP: some panels ask what happens after the cultural artifact; others ask what happens when the cultural artifact acquires paperwork.

The reference implementation is Working Paper No. 45, in which the office of village idiot is discovered to carry a hiring process, a record of prior occupancy, and a promotion pathway to town buffoon — stupidity as a renewable civic resource.