As our tolerance for risk declines, so too does our capacity for humor. By Dak Kopec I laughed—and then I second-guessed my laughter. That hesitation should bother us more than the joke ever could. This summer, while promoting my novel Broken Boys Beyond Friendships, I created several visual vignettes. One captured a ridiculous teenage prank: two boys sneaking onto a girls’ field hockey team wearing wigs and water balloons under their shirts. One balloon bursts, soaking one of them, while the...