A play on the phrase tragedy of the commons. In the tragedy of the commons, each person tries to maximize their own benefit, and the end result is that everyone loses because of overutilization of limited resources. In the comedy of the commons, each person, while getting something for themselves, also (directly or indirectly) contributes back to the common good at the same time.
BitTorrent makes use of the comedy of the commons, since the more people who participate, the better the service gets.
A type of comedy where they make many random and vague references to many other shows/books/movie/etc. So that when a passing reference by one character is recognized by you, it makes you feel cool knowing you are one of a very few people who caught that very obscure reference. The reason its called nerd comdy is becuase only smart (or nerdy people) will be able to catch enough references to find the show funny, while a stupid person would wonder why this is funny becuase he/she does not recognize any of the referneces.
When a series of mishandled events happen wherein each successive event is more horrific than the previous one.
Candy remarked that she thought forgetting her credit card would not have been that big of a deal to buy some smokes that night. Little did she know it would set off a comedy of terrors where she would have to prostitute herself to a chlamydia-riddled Albanian transvestite in front of her father just to get her car out of impound to rescue the infant in her trunk.