Who determines whether or not something is a joke?

[Thurlor]

Just as the title asks. I'm not asking who determines whether or not something is funny as that seems to be a purely subjective determination. But whether or not something is a joke is a matter of fact. A person need not find every joke funny.

Have any of you ever judged something to not be a joke and if so how did you determine that it wasn't?

It seems to me that the only person who can make a claim on whether or not something is a joke would be the person who made the 'joke'.

This all seems obvious to me so why do people argue over whether or not things are jokes? Even with the 'joker'. I used to think that it was just a verbal short hand for 'not funny' or maybe a bit of hyperbole but I have actually had discussions with people in which I have pointed out that at best they can say they didn't find a particular joke funny yet they insisted with a straight face that it wasn't a joke.

A joke can be unfunny or insensitive or crass or offensive or almost anything but it is still a joke.

Maybe I'm just too much of a literal thinker.

 

[Rebis]

Forget the words they use, they mean through their interpretation they do not find the statement humourous. They don't interpret it as a joke because it is not funny to them.
There are gaps in people's language and the subsequent meaning of the words they compile, they're not making an linguistic proposition.

 

[Marbles]

He who just sees jest in jest, and in the solemn solemnity merely, he has misunderstood them both, and that indeed severely!

My attempt at translating something the late, danish polymath Piet Hein once wrote. He was a golden goose of wisdom nuggets. I wonder if someone has translated his poetry.

People often get their french knickers in a bunch over jokes, but I find it equally astounding that these extraordinarily intelligent comedians can imply with a straight face that jokes are inherently harmless - jokes are lethal! They are probably the best way to plant ideas in someone's head, subtly influencing their opinions. The Russians attacked the american democracy through memes. It worked darn well. Growing up, seeing how extreme, secluded cultures (often supported my memes) could develop in web forums, I sometimes wondered when political/commercial web-meme propaganda would appear, or if it was already utilized.

Even if a joke is intended purely as a joke, it could easily be misunderstood and have the opposite influence of what you intend, or it can be abused by people who take you literally, so... Volatile, treat with caution.

 

[Anling]

While it could be an honest disagreement over what is or is not funny, often enough when someone says that it was not a joke, they mean that they think the joker was just being a jerk and claiming humor to avoid trouble. But it mostly depends on context.

Others may mean that they don't think it is a topic that can or should be joked about. That the joker may mean it to be a joke, but a lot of people won't take it that way because it was just too offensive. Context also matters a lot in this situation.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

It's simply subjective. If I don't think something is funny I don't laugh. If there was some sort societal pressure to make me think that thing is funny, I likely still won't laugh, or vice versa. Once even I was sitting with a group of people and they suddenly burst out laughing and I just had a straight face on with no reaction, one of them looking to me and saying something like "It's a joke, don't you see us laughing?" Looking at it now, I feel it might of been rude that I didn't at least fake a laugh.

All this being said, I have tendency to make people laugh unintentionally. Maybe it's my brashness or the oblivious nature of my socializing, idk. If it's not because there was a misunderstanding, then it's because I spoke some sort of truth, and I think that is at the core of it. If your making a joke than your making some sort of characterization, or assertion about the world, and people have every right to have a problem with that.

Dave Chappelle's , the smart motherfucker he is, got a shit load of free press for targeting minority groups in his latest special "Sticks and Stones" unironically. I really liked a lot of Chappele's work in the past so I knew I would watch it eventually. When I finally did I was disappointed. It made me laugh a total of 3 times. All he did was his same shtick from the last 3 decades (at a lower quality if you ask me) and add some social commentary. I'm not too PC myself, but I definitely don't think it deserves the 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. I knew he was joking, he just wasn't that funny to me on this occasion.

 

[Marbles]

Yeah, Sticks and Stones was a big disappointment. I'm no social justice warrior, myself, but the Jackson stuff was bad taste. I hope CKs return will be better.

 

[Hadoblado]

There're two reasons I can think of:

Sometimes people are oblivious to the reasons they say things. Sometimes they think they're saying a joke, but they're testing the social waters for what's okay to talk about, or trying to wiggle their way around the social hierarchy. They don't think to themselves "okay, and now I'll say the joke which will demolish Bradleys social standing", they just say the thing that has the consistent and predictable effect that just so happens to suit their social purposes. This is what I do all the time, and then I'll think about it in retrospect, and realise that there're patterns to what I do that maintain a particular social status quo.

So telling someone what they said was not a joke can be a way to show people the forest of their actions instead of reducing it to the tree.

And then there are Schrodinger's douchebags:

This happens aaaaallll the time. A lot of people use humour as a smokescreen for political agendas or beliefs that are too controversial to state plainly. Just like above, it's not necessarily a conscious strategy, just a social adaptation to unfavourable circumstances.

Anyway, I think overall, it's context-dependent. It'd be easy to mischaracterise someone's joke as not a joke - but I think you're kind of missing a whole bunch of what's going on if you just assume people are only not joking when they claim that's the case. As with most things social, it's too complex to write simple rules for.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Usually the people without a sense of humor

 

[Rebis]

Usually the people without a sense of humor

Not funny dude.

 

[Marbles]

Schrodinger's Douchebag, that's good - makes for a funny sketch. We should make a thread where we store funny ideas, then hire an ENFP to perform them for us.