What kind of humor is acceptable to Aspies

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^ My kids like Garfield (the orange cat) in the funny papers. I have never liked Garfield - he is just mean to everyone. I like Odie (the odd looking dog in the same strip) - he is nice to everyone. I don't like Jon, Garfield's owner - he is a Nerd but the worse kind of nerd - he is always the butt of the jokes - he never does anything redeeming. I like the family in Foxtrot - they all have their quirks but they are all likable - they take turns with the winning and loosing with being the butt of a joke or being the jokester. Jason is the nerd, but he is both lovable and infuriating at times. Sometimes he is totally oblivious and sometimes he outsmarts the others. I also like the Farside - the randomness of it and the Scientists and cave men acting out of type - the visual puns like the "boneless chicken farm".

True story: I was at a diner and I ordered the scrambled eggs and toast. The waitress asked me what kind of toast I wanted. I said "Rye - like my sense of humor" (of course meaning to pun on "wry"). So naturally she brought me . . . dry toast!

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/wry

https://socialmettle.com/dry-humor

Gary Larsen, of the Far Side, drew a picture with this caption "the real reason the dinosaurs went extinct".

The picture showed a mixed species group: T-rexes, hydrosaurs, etc, hanging out together, but all are furtively looking over their shoulders, while ....passing out cigarettes, and taking their first drags (like they were all human middle school kids).

Priceless.

It worked because "brevity is the soul of wit". It was just one still picture. But it said it all.

The original poster, Salad, attempted a similar joke:"the real reason the Cold War Ended". But he posted a long film clip from a movie. it took patience to watch the whole clip. And it was hard to connect the dots the way Salad intended to get the joke. It was the execution of the humor, specifically the lack of brevity, that was the problem. Not the brand of humor.

I think animal characters are sometimes able to get away with that behavior and still be likable to the audience, because it seems more innocent coming from them. Like, stealing is bad, but it doesn't seem so bad when it's Yogi Bear stealing pic-a-nic baskets.

I'm not as familiar with the "Garfield" comic, but I was a big fan of the animated TV specials and the Saturday Morning cartoon when I was a kid in the 80s. Part of what I liked was Lorenzo Music's dry voice performance as Garfield. In the first special, "Here Comes Garfield," Jon brings home Odie for the first time and Garfield initially hates having him there. However, after Odie is taken to the pound, Garfield rescues him.



LOL

When I was a kid, there was an IHOP commercial they showed on TV all the time where this guy orders the Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-and-Fruity Breakfast. The joke is that he's embarrassed to say the name, so he wears a fake nose and glasses to hide his identity. So one time when we went to IHOP, I wore a fake nose and glasses and ordered the Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-and-Fruity breakfast. The waitress wasn't familiar with the commercial and didn't get it at all, but my family thought it was funny.

Lolololzz

^^ vividgroovy - that really made me laugh

I once ordered the much advertised "double double cheese cheese burger burger please!" and got nothing but a dirty look in return. Turns out that not only did you not have to say the catch phrase to get the "deal" but the people working there really preferred that you didn't.

Yay!

That's too bad they gave you a dirty look. I would have found that funny .

Looolz Sorry they gave you a bad looks .

I just watched the latest episode of the YouTube show "The Nostalgia Critic." The original premise was basically insult comedy for bad movies, but recently, he's gotten super reasonable and is pretty much making just ordinary movie reviews. People in the comments are like, "Oh, thank goodness! He was way too mean and negative before! This is so much better! He's so much more mature now!" I grew up watching hyperbolically angry, ranting stand-up comedians, but apparently, some people are unfamiliar with this concept and have no idea why the show was like that before, treating as if it was an ordinary review show all along. It would be like if a sitcom suddenly turned into a serious drama and people were like "Oh, thank goodness! I don't know why they told all those jokes before! This is much better!"

??????

/Mats

Good one

I can get nurvous in settings I am not comfortable in and I can say silly things.
Once my first girlfriends sister and her sisters husband asked us to go for a meal in this expensive place. I did not know what to do there. I did not want to drink alcohol like they were so I asked for a pepsi or a cola. They asked me if I wanted ice.
I asked "What sort of ice?"
The waiter walked off and he told the chef and they could not stop laughing, and my ex.girlfriend told me off and so did the others.
I got the "Why can't you be normal like everyone else" sort of treatment. I did not go again. Bad experience...

In the day when the Big Mac was first introduced, I went with some friends from choir to a local Burger King, where most of us ordered Whopper meals.  One of the girls in our group stepped up to the counter and immediately sang, "Two all-beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame-seed bun!" in perfect pitch.

The whole place went silent.  She had sung the jingle to MacDonald's Big Mac in a Burger King.  When she realized what she had done, she immediately ran back to the van and hid under a blanket.

We got her a Big Mac meal on the way home.

Speaking of Garfield. Someone photoshopped Garfield out of the comic and called it Garfield minus Garfield. I find it quite amusing.

https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

Calvin and Hobbes. I love that. Intelligent, observational humour that makes a point about society. And it's cute.

Thanks for sharing

As a kid, I liked "Garfield" much better than "Peanuts." Now it's definitely the other way round. I grew up among some pretty unpleasant children, so the cynical and selfish Garfield seemed pretty normal to me, while it felt unrealistic that Snoopy and the "Peanuts" kids mostly treated each other decently.