Everyone else finds it funny, I don't...Why?

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CaptainTrips222
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09 Jan 2013, 6:06 am

I can relate. I used to REALLY feel like this, but I think over time my sense of humor kinda became more typical. But still, sometimes people will bust up laughing and I'll totally miss why.



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04 Dec 2013, 8:43 pm

DiscardedWhisper wrote:
If there's one thing I don't understand about people is how they seem to collectively find things funny that I find not funny. It's not that the humor is lost on me, or that the joke doesn't make sense. It just registers in my brain as unamusing, then I look around and see a whole room of people laughing themselves silly and I'm left feeling confused as to why. Then there are situations where the opposite happens, where an anecdote will strike me as humorous completely out of the blue and no one else will get it and I find myself gifted with bizarre looks from all sides.

One big example of this would be Seinfeld. It isn't funny to me, it's never funny to me. Nothing that they do on the show strikes me as humorous. Yet everyone thinks the show is a laugh riot. Then they can't understand why I'm not laughing and I'm left feeling awkward and weird...

Then again, this is pretty much formulae for every instance of my life, but for now we'll just concentrate on humor.


I've felt this way since I was in 3rd grade. The teacher would tell a joke and the entire class would laugh, but I wouldn't. Then the teacher would say something "serious" and I would be trying incredibly hard to keep myself from cracking up. There are a lot of reasons that could be so that have nothing to do with genetics. I mean, there are plenty of comedians I don't find funny, but I imagine it's because I don't share their same experiences. I think we laugh at things we can relate to, and maybe you just have a different perspective on what the world is like.



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04 Dec 2013, 11:37 pm

DiscardedWhisper wrote:
If there's one thing I don't understand about people is how they seem to collectively find things funny that I find not funny. It's not that the humor is lost on me, or that the joke doesn't make sense. It just registers in my brain as unamusing, then I look around and see a whole room of people laughing themselves silly and I'm left feeling confused as to why. Then there are situations where the opposite happens, where an anecdote will strike me as humorous completely out of the blue and no one else will get it and I find myself gifted with bizarre looks from all sides.

One big example of this would be Seinfeld. It isn't funny to me, it's never funny to me. Nothing that they do on the show strikes me as humorous. Yet everyone thinks the show is a laugh riot. Then they can't understand why I'm not laughing and I'm left feeling awkward and weird...

Then again, this is pretty much formulae for every instance of my life, but for now we'll just concentrate on humor.

Nietzsche has a wonderful aphorism about this conundrum that works for me: A joke is an epitaph on the death of a feeling.


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05 Dec 2013, 12:34 am

redrobin62 wrote:
<--- Doesn't get Seinfeld, either.


I hate sitcoms.



azaam
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05 Dec 2013, 1:47 am

rabidmonkey4262 wrote:
It's not you. Seinfeld was just a crap show.


I think Seinfeld was a great show but did u find Kramer funny?


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05 Dec 2013, 6:48 am

I never saw Seinfeld but I do like some sitcoms.
I grew up on friends, and still like it, although I seem to be the only one here :P
I really love Simpsons, and most South Park. The funniest show of all time is still Arrested Development though :D
In general, I have some moments where people laugh about something I don't find amusing, but that doesn't happen a lot.



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05 Dec 2013, 8:21 am

i have never found anything external to my imagination funny.

when people launch into telling a joke, i start to laugh before the punchline because i know that i will not "get it", and i imagine myself with a blank face upon the delivery of the punch line, and when people tell me that i am laughing before i should, and that the joke is not over, i laugh harder because i think that them trying to tell me a joke is a joke in itself.

sitcoms and other supposedly funny shows never make me laugh and i do not pay attention to them.
i see regular comedy as simply a string of linguistic recipes designed to make people laugh.

when i think of absurd ideas privately, i start to laugh, and sometimes i will tell them in a dead pan type of way as if i am being serious, and the expressions of bewilderment on the faces of whom i tell them too are just as funny.

i can catapult into an almost seizure of laughter if no one who i tell my jokes to gets my jokes. some people look at me in a state of concern for my mental welfare when i nonchalantly tell them an absurd idea, and that makes me laugh. i guess i can only laugh privately.

people looking confused is funny to me. they know i am not stupid, so they can not reconcile the stupidity of what i sometimes say.

i like to arbitrarily pretend that i am stupid, and when people wonder whether i am stupid, i just bask in mirth.

i laugh at people's teeth, and i also laugh at the furrowed expression wrinkles they have on their faces.
when i start to laugh unexplainedly, those expression furrows intensify, and so does my mirth.

i am much more reserved in experimenting with people than i once was. i used to find it funny blowing my horn at people who are doing nothing wrong on the road, and pretending i have a misplaced grievance with them, because their reactions were priceless.

sometimes i used to blow my horn at red traffic lights and i pressed my window button down and i used to stick my head out and insult them and people in neighboring cars looked at me as if i was insane, and that was the reaction i wanted to elicit.

i also like to make up unfunny jokes that people listen to but are unmoved by.
i like to tell them when everyone else is telling jokes that others laugh at, and it is my turn to tell a joke.

an example of this is the joke:
Q: what is the similarity of having no surplus therapod dinosaurs and riding a horse?.
A: in both situations you have no spare tire and a sore arse (no spare tyrannosaurus).

people who wear glasses often push them closer to their eyes and ask how it was funny, and i tell them that their reaction was the punchline to my private joke.

they still do not understand and sometimes i just leave because my stomach hurts because i can not stop laughing.

one of the worst social disasters i ever experienced was at a presentation i went to with my boss judy. the manager of the corporation that we were trying to sell our services to was quite normal during the presentation, and he said "can we continue the conversation in my office", and judy elbowed me in the tummy and she said "we've got the deal sewn up".
when we were in his office the conversation went normally until he said " OK. I'll just tell ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-janet to type the terms, and i just blew off into a fit of laughter. i know it is not nice to laugh at stuttering people and judy looked at me with a panicked expression, and i had to leave the room immediately and run outside and recover in the parking lot.

i could not re-enter the situation because it is like it hit my mental tickle nerves. it is hard to suppress laughter when i realize that laughing is the worst thing i could do in a situation.

judy apologized for me and the manager knew i was autistic and we got the contract because he knew i was a good programmer.

another time that was a social disaster was once when i was walking up a set of stairs at a railway station. a chinese man was walking down the stairs, and he lost his footing and he shuddered face first down the stairs and his briefcase was forced open and his papers were blown everywhere in the wind. he came to a halt next to me and he looked at me and i simply looked at him and said "good morning" and continued on my way up the stairs. i did not do it intentionally, and it was not until a few minutes later when i was remonstrated by other people in my vicinity for dismissing his plight that i found it funny. he was not injured much anyway, but my reaction to other people's remonstration was an uncontrollable smirk that angered them more.

people are like senseless herds who all are quite serious in their reactions.

who knows?. i have a sense of humor that no one else will ever "get" and i am not unhappy about that.

i have ODD and i used to play games with policemen.

once i decided that i would go for a walk in an area that i knew was crawling with police cars. as soon as i saw a police car i started to run as fact as i could in order for them to chase me.
i then ran through backyards and scaled fences in order to evade them, but they eventually caught me and they were as angry as disturbed wasps. back at the police station, they found that i had no police record and there was no crime committed anywhere near where i was, so they had to let me go, and one police officer told me to pass him a pen that was on my side of the desk, and i refused to do so.

policeman: yeah mate, pass me that pen"
me: no.
policeman: what?
me: no.
policeman: what's your problem? just hand me that pen.
me: no

he reached forward and grabbed the pen and he wanted to charge me with refusing to obey a policeman.

me: what will my sentence be if i am found guilty of not handing you a pen?
policeman: you are a problem mate. you've got problems.
me: but they are your problems. not mine.

another time i pretended i was dead in a recreational park at dawn.
i found an area with dead leaves all over the ground, and i lied face down and was motionless.
i tried to breathe so lightly that it could not be detected.
someone who was walking their dog picked up a stick and gently prodded me with it to see if i was dead and i did not respond.
she jabbed me again and i suddenly came to life and rolled face side up and said "what do you want" and she screamed and ran off and called the police. when the police asked me why i was laying face down on ground, i told them that i liked the smell of dead leaves.

i found that funny, but no one else did.

i am glad that i do not have that streak in me these days.



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05 Dec 2013, 8:44 am

invisiblesilent wrote:
I don't find Seinfeld nor nearly any other sitcom funny. I mean I actually find them completely, 100% devoid of humour. The one that puzzles me the most is Friends. How on earth is that one of the most successful sitcoms of all time? How on earth did the stars of that show manage to launch successful acting careers as a result of being in it. It is NOT FUNNY. Like NOTHING funny actually happens. I really don't understand and I totally share the OP's sense of puzzlement.


I always thought Seinfeld was incredibly boring. I like Friends okay, though I never watch it unless someone else in the room is watching. I didn't really register that it was supposed to be a comedy, though. I just think of it as short stories about the lives of a group of people (not especially smart) who live in New York. I should have remembered that all 30 minute story shows are supposed to be funny. (Very few actually are, to me)

As a child, I was a big fan of the Dukes of Hazzard for 2 years before I realized it was supposed to be a comedy, not a drama. (I had thought it was about these poor boys who were misunderstood and mistreated by the law enforcement of their home county, and about the corrupt government where they lived.) Shortly after realizing it was supposed to be comedy, not drama about being mistreated and not accepted, I lost interest.

I am always told I have no sense of humor, but I think it would be more accurate to say I have a different sense of humor. I think lots of things are funny. The problem is, that what is funny to me is rarely funny to others.



justkillingtime
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05 Dec 2013, 1:16 pm

b9 wrote:
i have never found anything external to my imagination funny.

when people launch into telling a joke, i start to laugh before the punchline because i know that i will not "get it", and i imagine myself with a blank face upon the delivery of the punch line, and when people tell me that i am laughing before i should, and that the joke is not over, i laugh harder because i think that them trying to tell me a joke is a joke in itself.

sitcoms and other supposedly funny shows never make me laugh and i do not pay attention to them.
i see regular comedy as simply a string of linguistic recipes designed to make people laugh.

when i think of absurd ideas privately, i start to laugh, and sometimes i will tell them in a dead pan type of way as if i am being serious, and the expressions of bewilderment on the faces of whom i tell them too are just as funny.

i can catapult into an almost seizure of laughter if no one who i tell my jokes to gets my jokes. some people look at me in a state of concern for my mental welfare when i nonchalantly tell them an absurd idea, and that makes me laugh. i guess i can only laugh privately.

people looking confused is funny to me. they know i am not stupid, so they can not reconcile the stupidity of what i sometimes say.

i like to arbitrarily pretend that i am stupid, and when people wonder whether i am stupid, i just bask in mirth.

i laugh at people's teeth, and i also laugh at the furrowed expression wrinkles they have on their faces.
when i start to laugh unexplainedly, those expression furrows intensify, and so does my mirth.

i am much more reserved in experimenting with people than i once was. i used to find it funny blowing my horn at people who are doing nothing wrong on the road, and pretending i have a misplaced grievance with them, because their reactions were priceless.

sometimes i used to blow my horn at red traffic lights and i pressed my window button down and i used to stick my head out and insult them and people in neighboring cars looked at me as if i was insane, and that was the reaction i wanted to elicit.

i also like to make up unfunny jokes that people listen to but are unmoved by.
i like to tell them when everyone else is telling jokes that others laugh at, and it is my turn to tell a joke.

an example of this is the joke:
Q: what is the similarity of having no surplus therapod dinosaurs and riding a horse?.
A: in both situations you have no spare tire and a sore arse (no spare tyrannosaurus).

people who wear glasses often push them closer to their eyes and ask how it was funny, and i tell them that their reaction was the punchline to my private joke.

they still do not understand and sometimes i just leave because my stomach hurts because i can not stop laughing.

one of the worst social disasters i ever experienced was at a presentation i went to with my boss judy. the manager of the corporation that we were trying to sell our services to was quite normal during the presentation, and he said "can we continue the conversation in my office", and judy elbowed me in the tummy and she said "we've got the deal sewn up".
when we were in his office the conversation went normally until he said " OK. I'll just tell ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-janet to type the terms, and i just blew off into a fit of laughter. i know it is not nice to laugh at stuttering people and judy looked at me with a panicked expression, and i had to leave the room immediately and run outside and recover in the parking lot.

i could not re-enter the situation because it is like it hit my mental tickle nerves. it is hard to suppress laughter when i realize that laughing is the worst thing i could do in a situation.

judy apologized for me and the manager knew i was autistic and we got the contract because he knew i was a good programmer.

another time that was a social disaster was once when i was walking up a set of stairs at a railway station. a chinese man was walking down the stairs, and he lost his footing and he shuddered face first down the stairs and his briefcase was forced open and his papers were blown everywhere in the wind. he came to a halt next to me and he looked at me and i simply looked at him and said "good morning" and continued on my way up the stairs. i did not do it intentionally, and it was not until a few minutes later when i was remonstrated by other people in my vicinity for dismissing his plight that i found it funny. he was not injured much anyway, but my reaction to other people's remonstration was an uncontrollable smirk that angered them more.

people are like senseless herds who all are quite serious in their reactions.

who knows?. i have a sense of humor that no one else will ever "get" and i am not unhappy about that.

i have ODD and i used to play games with policemen.

once i decided that i would go for a walk in an area that i knew was crawling with police cars. as soon as i saw a police car i started to run as fact as i could in order for them to chase me.
i then ran through backyards and scaled fences in order to evade them, but they eventually caught me and they were as angry as disturbed wasps. back at the police station, they found that i had no police record and there was no crime committed anywhere near where i was, so they had to let me go, and one police officer told me to pass him a pen that was on my side of the desk, and i refused to do so.

policeman: yeah mate, pass me that pen"
me: no.
policeman: what?
me: no.
policeman: what's your problem? just hand me that pen.
me: no

he reached forward and grabbed the pen and he wanted to charge me with refusing to obey a policeman.

me: what will my sentence be if i am found guilty of not handing you a pen?
policeman: you are a problem mate. you've got problems.
me: but they are your problems. not mine.

another time i pretended i was dead in a recreational park at dawn.
i found an area with dead leaves all over the ground, and i lied face down and was motionless.
i tried to breathe so lightly that it could not be detected.
someone who was walking their dog picked up a stick and gently prodded me with it to see if i was dead and i did not respond.
she jabbed me again and i suddenly came to life and rolled face side up and said "what do you want" and she screamed and ran off and called the police. when the police asked me why i was laying face down on ground, i told them that i liked the smell of dead leaves.

i found that funny, but no one else did.

i am glad that i do not have that streak in me these days.


Thank you, b9!! !! I have not laughed so thoroughly in years. I had to read your post in shifts because my eyes were scrunched closed with tears and I was unable to see enough to read. I did not like the horn honking part, though, as I have an extreme reaction to honking horns and slamming doors. Thanks, though. That was phenomenal.


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Janissy
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05 Dec 2013, 1:39 pm

b9 wrote:
i have ODD and i used to play games with policemen.

once i decided that i would go for a walk in an area that i knew was crawling with police cars. as soon as i saw a police car i started to run as fact as i could in order for them to chase me.
i then ran through backyards and scaled fences in order to evade them, but they eventually caught me and they were as angry as disturbed wasps. back at the police station, they found that i had no police record and there was no crime committed anywhere near where i was, so they had to let me go, and one police officer told me to pass him a pen that was on my side of the desk, and i refused to do so.


That could get you killed in the U.S. People have been shot by the police for far less.

Quote:
another time i pretended i was dead in a recreational park at dawn.
i found an area with dead leaves all over the ground, and i lied face down and was motionless.
i tried to breathe so lightly that it could not be detected.
someone who was walking their dog picked up a stick and gently prodded me with it to see if i was dead and i did not respond.
she jabbed me again and i suddenly came to life and rolled face side up and said "what do you want" and she screamed and ran off and called the police. when the police asked me why i was laying face down on ground, i told them that i liked the smell of dead leaves.

i found that funny, but no one else did.


It is funny to me in the re-telling. If I was that woman I would have wanted to punch you. It does sound like one of the Candid Camera or Punk'd jokes that sometimes get staged for TV.



superluminary
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05 Dec 2013, 1:55 pm

Seinfeld is not funny.



HawkingShrugged
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18 Sep 2020, 11:43 am

A long while back I watched a couple of Seinfeld episodes. I am evaluated as meeting diagnostic criteria for autism. I am waiting for a diagnosis (yes or no). I could not fathom how Seinfeld and his cohorts put so much time and energy into such a waste of time. :?


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25 Jul 2024, 3:56 am

HawkingShrugged wrote:
I could not fathom how Seinfeld and his cohorts put so much time and energy into such a waste of time. :?


Neither can I about how the 6 "friends" of Friends did likewise for 10 seasons on NBC (1994-2004).



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26 Jul 2024, 12:19 am

Bluth wrote:
I never saw Seinfeld but I do like some sitcoms.
I grew up on friends, and still like it, although I seem to be the only one here :P


I love sitcoms. I can watch "Friends" over and over. Others shows like that for me are "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Frasier," "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "I Love Lucy." Wit is very important to me. I like sitcoms with witty repartee.

There are some routines on "Seinfeld" I find very funny and quotable, but it's not something I could watch episode after episode like the other shows I mentioned.

* * * * *

Instances of me not finding funny what everyone else does:

When I went to movies often, they would always show trailers for comedies with fart jokes. Everyone else in the theater would laugh except me. Then, there would be some witty line of dialog and I'd laugh and nobody else would.

Another instance I always think of is in the "Addams Family" stage musical. There's an exchange between Grandmama and Pugsley:


GRANDMAMA: One swig of this [potion] and Mary Poppins turns into Madea!

PUGSLEY: I don't understand your references!

GRANDMAMA: Then why don't you put down your phone and pick up a book!


Everyone else cracked up. Oh, those kids and their smartphones! But all I could think was, this generic dialog makes no sense for these characters or the "Addams Family" premise, which is that nobody in the family acts "normally." Why would Pugsley be on a smartphone like any other kid?

Of course, there were also times I laughed along with everyone else, but only if I thought it was funny.

Another case is when "The Nostalgia Critic" on YouTube shifted its focus from verbal insult comedy about bad movies, which is what I was *specifically* a fan of, to sketch comedy, eventually making "clipless reviews" that were just extended sketches/parodies. Fans of this change were baffled there was anyone who didn't like it. Comedy is comedy, they argued, so why don't you find it as funny as the older material? They claimed nobody ever gave a specific reason. One guy -- it wasn't me, but I agreed with him -- tried to explain why a particular joke didn't work without playing off the real movie clip. And the pro-sketch people dismissed it with, "Oh, I didn't know you were going to pick apart specific jokes!" They tried to use the saying "if you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny" to claim all criticism of comedy was automatically invalid.

One more example. There was a recent superhero sitcom -- I won't name it because it's very divisive. One of the main defenses from criticism was "Oh, you just don't like it because it's a lighthearted sitcom. You want every superhero thing to be dark and serious!" And I was like, "Not me, I love a good sitcom. This is a BAD sitcom!" And I explained why I thought so. I asked the defenders why they found it funny. One person got terribly offended that even I asked such a thing. Another basically said, "it's funny because it makes fun of the correct people in our society." Which often seems to be the case with today's political humor. (And is that "lighthearted?!") I sometimes find political humor funny -- but only if I think it's witty, not because of who the target is.



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26 Jul 2024, 10:54 am

Humor is individual.

But to make it a bit broader;

- Your language processing (and how much you're exposed and how much you can access) tied to your perception of it's context is directly different

- Your culture and upbringing (your personality, your priorities, your values; which is trivial, which is serious, etc. and/or perception and sentiments towards it, along with anything that one acquires contexts through it) is different

- You don't have the right knowledge or exposure (media consumption, certain scenes, communities and fandoms), be in certain situations or experience (intersectionality, occupations, and inside jokes of specific circles or even generational gaps) to get the reference or appreciate it


It's more or less kind of like memes, really, if something is relatable to you enough to perceive it as a joke or something just funny as others do and share around...


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26 Jul 2024, 11:18 am

I never did get Seinfield either.


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