Am I funny? Maybe!

I am terrible at telling a joke. Even when putting effort into it most people won’t pick up my prosody – I can have pretty Flat Affect. Perhaps my joke telling is funny in a “bad movie” sort of way.

I am better at dry/deadpan humor, though I sometimes mess it up by smiling in the middle. It fits my natural style:

• Self-deprecating humor can work with low prosody
  • low status signal to NT observers which puts them at ease
  • e.g. bragging about modesty – self deprecation + logical paradox, flat delivery
• Ridiculous situations
  • does not require social intuition but logic. Flat delivery highlights the absurdity
  • visual deadpan: terrible real estate photos – there are tons of these sites and they are awesome
• Hyper-literalism (common among programmers)
  • OK, these are maybe in the “dad joke” category, but I like them
  • Drax the Destroyer when told something went “over his head”: “Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.”
• Precise understatement
  • “this is suboptimal” when it is a complete disaster
• Radical attribution, proxy agency
  • xcode as the fall guy – very funny to me
  • the dog told me …
• Sarcasm
  • risky because of low prosody, except with my kids and maybe closest friends

These work without Social Salience and some are probably even funny to NT people. Maybe not my kids.