When Humor Backfires

[Pike]

As long as I can remember I've had a thing for deadpan humor. The problem with deadpan humor is that the entire joke is that you're acting serious, which means that if you pull it off well people will not realize you're joking!

This got me into trouble as a kid a lot. I remember being like five years old and staring out the window of our house and then deadpanning "There's a motorcycle gang in the driveway" which I lifted from some newspaper comic somewhere. My parents just about flipped and thought that I'd actually seen something out there.

Things didn't improve as I got older and started to deadpan self-deprecating humor. When I was about 16-17 and in drivers' ed, my mom asked me how it was going. I told her not well and when she asked for details I deadpanned, as a joke, "I dunno, I just run into things." She has yet to let me live it down and insists that when I told her afterwards that it was actually a joke, I was backpedaling.

Anyways this sort of thing happens to me a lot: I make a joke and play it off as serious because I find that funny and then people think I really am serious. I think the internet makes things even worse in that regard, because TEXT!

Does this happen to anyone else? What are some times you've tried to make a joke and it has failed or backfired?

[nik0tine]

It's usually not funny until it backfires anyway.

[Pike]

Fair enough.

[Freya]

People think i'm angrier on the internet. When I'm very rarely angry at all.

[NeoCracker]

The closest a joke has ever come to backfiring on, (Well, perhaps it has before and I just didn't realize it. ) was when I worked with my friend Danny, and we say horrible, horrible mean spirited things to each other. One thing I told him pissed off a nearby person, but for some god awful reason, she immediately started bitching him out for it, and I went right back to work and heard nothing of it from her.

This was like, the third time Danny had been blamed for some one else saying something seconds afterwords. For some reason people just seem to want to blame him for things.

[Shorty]

I gave up a long time ago telling long-winded jokes because I would find them funny but as I'm telling them I could see the looks on the faces of the people listening turn to and then I would stop telling the joke halfway through because it was no longer funny. I can't do deadpan humor, either. I have no poker face.

Essentially, I find a lot of things funny but am terrible at executing comedic anecdotes and jokes.

[Tigmafuzz]

People think i'm angrier on the internet. When I'm very rarely angry at all.

This. So much. I'm such a loving person ;_;

[Pike]

Truthfully I sometimes worry if everyone on the internet thinks I'm an ass.

[Clo]

Everyone on the internet thinks I'm an ass.

Edit: OK, and maybe I'm a little ruthless in real life. But once someone is a friend then they have my axe and bow and all that.

[Cuchulainn]

PPl always think I'm serious on the net. Not so bad in person as they can see the wee glint in the eye, cheek grin & know im smurfin about. But honestly, I rarely care if they think i'm serious, angry or not. Its the net. Nothing matters here.

[Alpha2099]

I'm always using deadpan humor. It's just how I am. Most of the time it's funny, and people laugh, but every now and again I come off as an asshole. It's the risk associated with that kind of humor, and I can't really afford to worry about it much.

[Laddy]

Deadpan humor is fun, but I have a strange as hell way of using it.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I love deadpan humor. The majority of all my jokes are either completely deadpan or over the top angry and people always think I'm serious about it.

I think I'm funny.

[Jiro]

I'm only funny on the internet when people have no idea that I'm just a blithering mess.

[fire_of_avalon]

This happens to me occasionally. Generally, the next step is for me to call attention to how flat the joke fell and then go on my way.

Sometimes, though, I come up with real winners. The other day I told my friend I had used all the toilet paper in her bathroom to clean up some paint. I tell her she shouldn't use that bathroom.

What does she do? What do you think?

Friend: "...hey! There's no toilet paper in here!"
Me: "I told you this five minutes ago. I said not to use this bathroom."
Friend: "Crap!"
Me: "I hope not."