3 ms·

What do we do about people who don't get the joke?

• ggm 9y ago
  Sometimes I don't get the joke. It's an odd feeling realising you missed a pun. You become the butt of the joke very quickly and then you're in the out crowd and it's very cold and lonely out there. In jokes are designed to exclude. My personal favourite is the German philology professor joke "I am about to tell a joke once I have finished laughing at it, I will explain it to you"
  • khedoros1 9y ago
    But it's less about not getting a joke, and more about not realizing the satirical nature of a piece of writing, like posting an Onion article as a serious headline, for example.
• RickJWagner 9y ago
  To be a great joke, it has to be delivered to the right audience. There's no joy in a joke that's too clever to be understood by the listener. Sometime's that unavoidable, but sometimes it's a sign the teller is seeing things too myopically.
  • mcphage 9y ago
    The Onion and The Borowitz Report are many things, but “subtle” is not one of them.