Just joking

I like to crack jokes. However, not many people actually understand the jokes I made. That's where the problem comes in.

The thing is, it is not hard to laugh at my jokes. They usually consists of two layers of meanings, one superficial and the other deeper. One can laugh at the superficial while failing to catch the deeper joke entirely. One may even just laugh at the way I crack the jokes, as opposed to the jokes themselves, deeper meaning or not since, as I have been told a couple of times, I do get pretty animated sometimes.

The problem with such jokes is that I'll never know if the person got the deeper meaning or merely the superficial one. I can only assume that she did, because there is no way she could laugh so heartily at the superficial layer. Then again, I can't be too sure.

The first hint that people just aren't getting the deeper jokes came when I was an undergraduate. I was "marveling" at the N** system of allowing students to take their tests in the Lecture theatre, which was such an awesomely stupid idea since everyone can just turn around and look at each other's script without even straining. I can even lean back slightly, and see the person's script behind me! I was so amazed that I told my friend that "Hey, we can compare our answers later, and we can even discuss quietly; no one will even see us!" We had a good laugh over that. Later when we were submitting our scripts, she spotted a mistake on my script, and told me about it. Then she was surprised that I didn't want to change the answer.

That's the problem apparently. Most people think that when I made any propositions, and I want to make it sound natural, I will just pass it off as a joke, but I still meant it beneath my joking exterior. That's not true however. The case above for example, was a joke in the sense that the system was so stupid that we can actually cheat, but it is also a deeper joke in the sense that I, one of the last persons to actually want to cheat, is actually the one who suggested cheating. The first layer is a sarcastic jab at the school; the second layer is a sarcastic jab at myself for being such a goody-two-shoes.

Naturally, if you don't know me well enough to be a goody-two-shoes, you wouldn't know the second layer of the joke. Or, if you don't know me well enough to know I always make layered jokes, you also won't know from the joke that I actually considered myself to be a goody-two-shoes.

Why do I want to make layered jokes then? Just stick to the simple ones you say. Well, for one, layered jokes are more fun. Any tom, dick or harry can do some piece of slapstick humor. It is only when you throw in some intellectual thinking into the joke, that you see the real fun of it. It is like a secret shared between the teller and his audience, all the more fun because it is unspoken yet perfectly understood. Douglas Adams once said this of Monty Python, that it made him realise "comedy was a medium in which extremely intelligent people could express things that simply couldn't be expressed any other way." That was the spirit of my jokes methink, or at least, I aim to have that spirit.

Again, the problem crops up; how many people would actually understand the intelligent jokes, or how many would bother to try? In my previous post, how many actually got the joke in the last two lines? And did I really mean it when I say that the electronic ordering system was stupid? You will be surprised at how many people actually didn't get it.

This problem creates some additional problems. Some people, owing to a misunderstanding of my jokes, or a failure to appreciate the deeper layer, think that I am egoistic (in fact usually when I am jokingly self-deprecating), callous (when I joke about leaving people who I care about in the lurch; I wouldn't joke about it if they were people I don't care about), or vulgar (I don't even want to imagine why). Which would explain why some people took an intense dislike to me, and some of the weird comments that I am really egoistic and like.

Maybe I ought to add a disclaimer each time I make a joke, to emphasize that it is just a joke. Something like "Hahaa, JUST JOKING."

In a perfect world, there is no need for such disclaimers. But apparently this is not that world.

Jokes with double meanings are double the fun, but it can get a little lonely in a world where no one understands them. Even something seems to be lost the minute I actually declare that "Hahaa, just joking." Something IS lost already the minute I wrote this post.