Guide To Become Funny To Strangers: 3 Kinds Of Non-Offensive Humor That Easily Crack People Up
Make It Impossible For Them To Keep A Straight Face
Look… I know, okay? I know that you want to crack smart and witty jokes on any topic you wish to. I know you want to sound like the most interesting person in the room. I know you want to never run out of topics while communicating with someone.
But you need to understand this one simple thing to stop making them cringe and actually laugh at your savvy jokes.
What’s that one thing you ask?
It’s…
Understanding Your Audience
Your audience, which in this case, is a stranger.
Now, being a stranger, she has no idea what your sense of humor is like. Nor do you have any idea about the kind of jokes she appreciates. So, if you try to make her laugh with some joke she doesn’t appreciate, you’ll create resistance in her mind towards you.
Bad jokes are a huge turn-off man.
To save yourself from this, you must make jokes that are apparent to be jokes. Something safe and fun!
CAUTION: Jokes You Should Never Crack Until You’re A Pro
Now that you know your audience, tell me, what kind of jokes would you crack?
Sarcastic? No! People who understand and appreciate Sarcasm are extinct. Those who don’t, hate it. Because they think that you’re being serious about what you’re saying. And when they find out you meant exactly the opposite, they feel deceived. Don’t assume that they’re one of the “extinct”.
So what?
Puns? No again. Seriously, so many of them don’t understand silly little harmless puns. You could literally see that look in their face, “Hey man, what’s wrong with you?”
Then?
Teasing? God No! Not as a rookie. You really need to consider a few things before teasing someone. You’ll be able to tease in a healthy way if you read some more about humor. Otherwise, it may be seen as mocking the other person. You don’t want that to happen, do you?
Here are three types of jokes that you may consider practicing in your daily conversations to master them quickly. And soon enough you’ll be able to crack great jokes in any context and make it impossible for someone to keep a straight face.
Let’s get into it…
3 Safe Techniques To Start Getting More Laughter and Giggles
Exaggeration
SAFE! Start practicing this simple and easily understood type of humor from today itself.
Take an observation about something and exaggerate it way out of proportion. The more absurd the comparison, the funnier it is.
Examples:
Referring to a thick book: “I am lifting this book from tomorrow. That way I’ll save 20 minutes of going to and returning from the gym.”
Referring to a medium-sized light bulb: “You think that Industrial-sized bulb’s going to fit in there?”
Misdirection
One of my favorites.
When you lead people to believe a conversation is going one way and then you surprise them by going a completely different way. This works great because Unexpectedness equals Funny.
I can think of an incident as an example that happened back when I was in high school.
A friend came up to me, kept his hand on my shoulder and asked, “18, right?”
Me: “What ‘18’?”
Him: “You scored 18 out of 70 in Mathematics, right?”
Me: “Damn bro. I thought you were confirming my age.”
Storytelling
When you inject jokes, in the middle of incidents and events that you’re narrating, that’s storytelling (in terms of humor).
Stand-up comedians are the best people to learn from. Watch a lot of stand-up comedy videos on YouTube and you’ll see how they flawlessly inject jokes while narrating some incident.
People love listening to fun stories and incidents. Take advantage of that, my friend.
Read till the end for an example of cracking jokes through storytelling.
Conclusion
It’s really simple. Start looking at everything from a different and maybe a little weird perspective. You’ll see yourself master cracking jokes on anything in no time.
And remember, being funny is learnable just like a skill. Just become really conscious and observant… And Practice! Practice! Practice!
Bonus Tip: Follow Ryan Reynolds on Twitter. He’s Hilarious. Apparently, you can also read a blog on his tweets compilation.
There you go! Time for “the” storytelling example I promised.
“And the questions from my CAT (examination) paper was so tough man. I remember one question from my CAT paper: Arun, an accountant, when he got married, the average (age) of the family was 25. I was like, “Cool. I will solve this.” I started solving in the working column. After a year they gave birth to triplets, average age went down to 22. I was like, “Cool” and continued solving in the working column. After a year they gave birth to a daughter, average went down to 20. And after another year they gave birth to twins, average age went down to 18. What is Arun’s age? I said, “Fuck Arun’s age. What is he doing???” SOMEBODY TALK TO HIM PLEASE… He is a bloody accountant… For all you know his wife works in an NGO… How will he handle this??? 12 kids??? Is he a man or a dog??? Who does this???”
Source: Break Up and MBA | Stand up Comedy by Rahul Subramanian | YouTube
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
Cheers!
