Bored Panda wanted to get comedy writer Ariane's opinion on what it says about us as people if some jokes go over our heads. "Depending on the situation, it either means you’re not privy to knowledge you need to understand the joke, or it just means your brain doesn’t work in the way it needs to in order to understand that particular type of humor," she said.
However, we shouldn't worry because we all miss some jokes some of the time. Nobody's perfect, not even comedy professionals. "Stuff goes over my head occasionally too and I’m a comedian!" Ariane told us.
The comedian isn't sure if our awareness of what's funny is just about exposure to humorous content. "Babies find a lot of things funny, so it’s partly innate," she mused that understanding comedy is a mix of nature and nurture. "But for jokes like puns, you definitely need a firm grasp of language, and for political satire, you of course need an understanding of politics."
We also touched on whose responsibility it is for the audience to get the joke, the comedian or the listeners. "It really depends on the joke and how it’s told," Ariane said.
"People can’t be expected to get badly-told jokes where the setup or punchline is mangled, but if the joke’s told well, it’s not necessarily the comic’s fault if another person doesn’t get it. Humor can be quite a niche and individual thing, but if a joke regularly falls flat most comics will drop it from their sets."
Judging people for their mistakes and feeling embarrassed when we make them ourselves are part and parcel of being a human being. It’s a part of who we are. However, there’s a healthy way to react when someone (including us!) misses the joke entirely.
Psychologist and wellbeing consultant Lee Chambers explained to Bored Panda during a previous in-depth interview that people judge others both consciously and automatically. “Comically, we are often told as children not to judge others and have stories shared about how judging others can mean we upset them or lose opportunities to see what really lies behind our perception," he told us.
There are a variety of reasons why we might judge someone. "Sometimes, we judge others to feel superior ourselves, finding faults in others, highlighting them, and feeling better about ourselves in the process. Sometimes, we use it to work out where we fit in, recognizing how we want to be, where our aspirations lie, and how we don't want to become," the psychologist revealed.
"Sometimes, it's in response to our own flaws, and we attack others for what we don't like or don't see into ourselves. And on other occasions, it's to fit into a wider group who judge something or someone, and we conform and perform with the same judgment,” Lee said.
In the psychologist’s view, being judgmental "does have some benefits when used mindfully.” For instance: “It can help us to set goals, find alignment with our values, it can help us to build the self-awareness of others and it can boost our self-esteem.”
What’s more, passing judgment on others can help us make positive social choices. “it's understanding how and why we judge that gives us the ability to use it for our benefits instead of escaping our flaws or pulling others down."
Meanwhile, if we end up feeling embarrassed because we didn’t get a joke and we’ve responded in a frankly silly way online, it’s important to remember to accept those feelings. Running away from our embarrassment can, later on, morph into shame.
"We spend a lot of time and effort presenting an ideal version of ourselves to other people. When something happens that contrasts with the image we’ve been projecting—when we say or do something that shows we actually aren’t as graceful or as smart as we’d like people to believe—we feel embarrassed," Vanessa Bohns, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University, told Bored Panda.
