I don’t and I get called a prude, humourless, and wet blanket .
Jokes that have kids with potty mouths accidentally saying shit, bitch, bullshit, snatch, blowjob, fucker and twat are not funny to me. Those jokes are predictable, juvenile and dull and should not be called funny. These jokes that I get in email are usually prefaced with a warning, Warning if you dont laugh at this joke you must be in a coma. call me a coma Im still not laughing.
I asked the person who sends me these, where do you get these lame jokes? The reply was “Our HR director sends them to me!” :rolleyes:
No, but I can’t predict what jokes I will find funny. I try not to laugh at some things I think are offensive but sometimes a joke has enough absurdity to slip under my guard.
I should add that I know several comedians/comedy writers and I remember one telling me, “Lots of people claim to have a sense of humour, but untill you hear them laugh at a joke about something they believe in or a joke that they think is in bad taste, you have no evidence other than they like to laugh about what they** like ** to laugh about.”
Like most people, I long ago mastered the art of polite laughter, quite handy when someone says something ostensibly humorous but, well, not. I don’t want to laugh at something I find offensive–and generally don’t–but sometimes find myself caught up in the wave before I realize it. Then I’m mad at myself. This laughter is a tricky business.
I almost always let out a sympathy chuckle at anything that I can readily perceive as an attempt at humor, wether I want to or not. Bugs me sometimes, because it gives the appearance that I thought something was funny, when in fact, I thought it was incredibly stupid.
Oh Lordy. I had a boss who insisted on sharing lame-ass jokes on a regular basis. My boss!
I think he told me he got them from Playboy magazine. The jokes were insipid, his delivery wretched and yet that never stopped him.
I would let out the sympathy chuckle -a skill I have yet to master- whereas others showed no shame in pretending to bust a gut and saying that he was the funniest guy in the whole fucking world. I would at times respond with something along the lines like “See? That’s why you have a day job,” or “You realize telling a joke that bad in some countries will get you killed.”
It depends on who’s telling the joke. If it’s someone I know well and like, I might laugh at an unfunny joke just to be polite. But people who know me well can probably tell that I’ve heard the joke before or didn’t like it by the way I laugh. If I find a joke tasteless or crude to the point of being disgusting, my silence, or even my facial expression speaks volumes.
I thought about this question for some time before posting, and you know, I’m in the enviable position of not having many people tell me jokes, lame or otherwise. It’s usually me making them. But no, I would not laugh at an unfunny joke. I don’t pretend to endorse vapidity by laughing at it. If you tell me something funny, great. If it’s stupid or offensive, I’m not going to laugh to encourage someone who thinks stupid or offensive jokes are funny.
I laugh a lot in my life, as I am easily amused and like to laugh and make jokes, but a joke I don’t find funny will get a polite smile only. I find most jokes funny unless they are mean-spirited (crudeness is not a problem for me); I almost never find practical jokes funny.
By your friends’ standards I have a good sense of humour, don’t ask - I laughed a lot at “Team America” in spite of myself. I tried not to laugh at such a terrible movie, but it made me laugh anyway.
A lot of higher-ups in my company are simply delighted with silly email forwarded jokes, they print them out and pass them around all the time. So, a boss hands you a piece of paper, standing back expectantly smiling while you read it, they obviously think it’s funny, so yes. I laugh at jokes I don’t find funny, but only for job security.
Usually not. I just am not a laugher. My husband uses my “laugh index” to recommend movies/jokes/tv shows to other people. If I crack a smile, it’s usually going to make other people snort, if I laugh out loud, you can bet yer ass it’s pretty funny.
On the subject of those lame-ass forwards, I just delete them unread most of the time. My sister sends me a lot of that crap, never actually emails to say “oh the kids are doing well and I am still alive” but sends me forwards like mad. I scan them, make sure there’s nothing of interest and trash them. At work, I got into a wee bit of a pickle for sending an email telling a few people about a free sample that I had come across (one of those no-strings attached, you don’t even have to pay shipping and it was a pricey item – some oil of olay regenerist stuff IIRC). My supervisor gave me the “email is for business use only” lecture, but less than a week later she forwarded one of those cutesy little puppy dogs and kitty cats joke emails to me. I replied with “I am sorry, I think you sent this email to me in error – I could not find any work-related information in it.”
Most of the time. Especially if I don’t know the person. Unless it’s less joke, more hateful-Nazi-Racist-KKK-Are-You-With-Me? bullshit, in which case I give a blank stare. I really hate when people test the waters with jokes like that.
Never. If the joke is really unfunny I give them the WTF glare. I figure people need feedback as to whether or not their sense of humor is appealing to me. I don’t want to encourage people who think they’re funny but aren’t. Otherwise we’ll have more Carlos Mencias and Carrottops running around. How awful a world would that be?
for some reason I thought I posted this in the pit…
Thinking about it, if that lame joke was delivered by a comedienne it would probably slip under my radar and I would probably laugh the first time I heard it, just by being in an environment where I want to be entertained. But in an everyday setting I’m not prone to laugh at jokes just for the sake of being amenable and one of the crowd.
What I hate is having the spotlight put on me because I may be the only one who didn’t laugh at the kiddie pottymouth joke. If you dont laugh you get put on the defensive and made to endure yet another kiddie pottymouth joke for the sake of proving that you really do have a sense of humor for kiddie pottymouth jokes.
I might laugh, HA, at a crude joke, I might laugh HA, at a lame joke, I might even laugh HA HA at a crude lame joke but I will never laugh at those kiddiepotty mouth jokes.
Nope. If it’s funny, I’ll laugh. I find a lot of things funny. Crude, dirty, and subversive jokes are perfectly okay with me. Pointlessly racist jokes, where the humor is mean or takes advantage of really negative stereotypes, are not funny to me, though some clever or surreal jokes will get me. Dead baby jokes or other gross-out jokes are things I haven’t found funny since I was about ten. Practical jokes are usually not very funny. Some non-mean-spirited ones will get a chuckle, but anything deliberately mean is not amusing to me. I don’t even like fake meanness like in The Office; besides, that’s almost reality, and thus too close to life to laugh at.
I will grin or groan when appropriate, and will retaliate against puns. I have a large vocabulary, a quick wit, and training in using it courtesy of a punny uncle. (On my first visit back the the US after living in Japan for a while he said, “You know, Diet Coke is the favorite drink of the Japanese government.” That was a groaner. I’m the only one in the younger generation who even gets the jokes without explanation, much less appreciates them.)
I don’t fake-laugh. I’ll acknowledge the attempt at humor with a quick smile, but that’s as far as I’ll go. I’m also likely to make a joke out of the failed joke, or zing the person about it, like one of minlokwat’s lines. There’s no way I would laugh just to brown-nose the boss. I can’t imagine working at a job where my laughing at a bad joke would trump competence and being friendly and social in other ways.
This NYT article suggests that laughter is more of a social survival skill than the pure, surprised delight that accompanies what most of us would consider to be true laughter. The article claims that “social laughter” i’s very hard to fake and so is very useful in assessing the honest friendly intentions of others.
I’ll smile at things that aren’t particularly funny, and I laugh fairly easily, especially at the absurd, but I’m lousy at faking amusement. So, while I do offer encouragement to people who are making a genuine effort to make an encounter more pleasant, I don’t even try to do so in the case of blatantly offensive or aggressive, unfunny “jokes” such as those you describe in your OP. Those overtures sometimes seem more like tests of your willingness to join in a pack of jackals (like the schoolyard teasing/bullying mentioned in the linked article) than a sincere attempt to elicit a grin or sense of camaraderie.
I laugh at unfunny jokes. Mainly because people telling those jokes think they are being funny and that strikes me as hilarious. The worse the joke, the funnier I tend to think it is, especially if the delivery is bad.
I also enjoy bad movies, as long as I know they are bad going into them. If I expect a good movie, I will be disappointed. But if a movie is uninhibited in its badness, I will get some entertainment out of it.
People have a quota of bad jokes. I’ll laugh at the first few, smirk at the next few then give mouth-only smiles, and I’ll finally start giving them blank stares.
It’s important to realise that it’s not just bad jokes. Too many jokes is always annoying, even if the jokes are somewhat funny in isolation - especially if the person is dominating or sidetracking conversation.