Online learning burnout poses a paramount concern due to its detrimental influence on students' academic cognitive learning and mental health. Aiming to explore the association between teacher humour (content-related and content-unrelated) and online learning burnout, this study surveyed 585 college students enrolled in various online courses. The results show that teacher humour, regardless of its relevance to the course content, does not directly correlate with online learning burnout. However, both types of humour can indirectly relate to burnout through enjoyment and boredom. Content-related humour exhibits a negative correlation with boredom and a positive relationship with enjoyment. In contrast, content-unrelated humour is positively correlated with boredom. These findings underscore that teachers should be cautious about employing humour in online teaching because not all forms of humour can play a positive role. This study also contributes to inspiring teachers to integrate content-related humour with online teaching, laying a foundation for future research.