Interpret this joke for me please

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I believe I get the joke, but I would like to hear what you think.

In this video, the joke from 0:25-1:10, why do you think people laugh, and is it funny to you?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmfJdjy06xg[/youtube]


Thanks in advance!

i have no idea, I presume the end part was meant to be the joke, I don't get it. I don't really find jimmy carr very funny anyway

I think the funny thing (to NTs I suppose) is that he in the end has to come up with some answer in order to not seem asocial and exclude himself from the crowd. It is like, the more information you hide, the less of a ticket do you have to the "good company of others", and in the end he has to admit the good company is too important for him to keep not answering this stupid question. So the questioner is pointing out his need for company making him dependent and thereby more weak. But please tell me what you think.


And they call us weird

Last edited by qawer on 08 Jan 2014, 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

He is enancting a conversation between a bullying guy and his obviously hetero friend. The joke is funny to the audience because of the ridiculous lengths the bullying guy goes to in order to call the other a homophobic slur. In real life, that joke would only be funny to the bully.

Edited to add: The right answer to the question posed by the bully would be, "Your mom", btw. Then you would "win" by suggesting the bully's mother is mannish, and everyone would be all "Good one, bro."

But why is it the friend feels like he has to come up with an answer in the end instead of just ignoring him? Is that not because he is forced to stay social to be part of the good company?

In this kind of stupid game, to not answer the question is to lose by default. Obviously if you won't say, it must be because you're hiding the fact that you are secretly gay. So hetero-friend is in a trap and has to make a response. Another response could be, "Don't be such a dick, I'm not answering your stupid question", escalating the thing from play-aggression to real aggression--but you can only really win the upper hand with wit.

Nah, you're off the mark qawer, even if I'm not on the mark. What you said wouldn't be remotely funny, I couldn't see it being construed as a joke with your interpretation.

I'm not british, so excuse me if I'm way off the mark. Is poof a term for a homosexual? If it is then I get it, but I don't think it's very funny. There's a couple of things that would go into making this funny. It's like this annoying guy is trying to call you gay, and he's leading you into saying you'd sleep with someone of your own gender. But you (the person he says poof to) refuse to answer, probably because you know he's going to call you gay. That would be a very childish joke, as in, a child would do this joke and find it funny. An annoying person who is annoying no matter what you say.

Although...it could be just a poorly done joke. Like he's trying to establish for certain that 'you' would never, ever, ever sleep with a man, and then he's saying 'Poof!' because you're now saying that you would sleep with a man and you're now a paradox so 'poof' you vanish? A better way to do this joke (if I've got it) would be to have 'you' get increasingly more irate at the question and eventually be like 'I would never ever sleep with a man, this would never happen, such a thing would never exist, if I were to sleep with a man I would not be me!' as the 2nd to last answer to the question, and the final answer 'you' makes this big sigh and is like 'Fine, fine, I'll answer your doggamned question...I suppose I'd sleep with-'
'Poof!'

It's kinda an amalgamation of the annoying guy being really annoying and getting away with it no matter what you do and the whole second paragraph really.
Make more sense now?

Yes and no. Yes because they're friends, no because the guy answering might not be nearly as annoyed as you would be, yes because he might feel that this IS the right way to react in this situation, no because ignoring him wouldn't resolve the situation anyways.

But I still don't think this addresses why it's supposedly funny.

Last edited by cavernio on 08 Jan 2014, 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree with your interpretation.

This situation does come up weirdly often. With women (as adults), it is often an actual question rather than an attempt to bully, probably because there is less of a stigma for women. Once when posed to me I said I would invent a time machine and go back in time to sleep with Marilyn Monroe. This was counted as an excellent answer. Between women it's often a way to suss out what women consider beautiful in other women. Between men (because of the stigma) it is intended as exactly the sort of verbal trap that the comedian is showing it to be.

The best answer is a witty comeback that turns the joke back on the would-be bully. Your upthread example of "your mom" is a fine example, bundling a slur against the questioner's mother while simultaneously not naming a man. An example I overheard in real life was "same guy as you would choose, I figure" which is good but not as good as your example. It turns the joke back on the questioner but doesn't come bundled with an extra insult.

As you pointed out, the non-witty comeback doesn't "win", it just escalates. But some people are not quick with witty comebacks and unfortunately default to something like your example.

Yes.

It is used as a slur, equivalent to a different one used more commonly in the USA.

The joke is funny because:

1) of simple repetition. The persistence of the two men is funny, regardless of what they are talking about. There's probably a technical explanation (for example, we laugh because they are silly and don't learn), but I think the repetition alone is funny.
2) the "defendant" has just gone to extraordinary lengths to point out that he very definitely is not gay, far further than most people would go. When he finally begins to consider the question of who he would hypothetically sleep with if he hypothetically had to, after steadfast refusal to do so, the "prosecutor" calls him by a homophobic slur- even though the defendant himself seems to be quite homophobic.

The joke seems to be that the roles change abruptly, unexpectedly.

The asker seems to be of a mind that even a straight man would, under some circumstances, have sex with another man.

The one being asked says "I wouldn't do it, no matter what. It's not a question of 'who', because I would never do it under any circumstances."

Both keep insisting, over and over again, both showing they're dedicated to their position on the matter.

Finally, the one being asked breaks down a bit and says "Well, IF I had to...", which is an obvious change in his rigid stand.

The asker then suddenly changes his own insistant position, and reveals that in his opinion, any guy who'd even consider having sex with another man, even for a second, is a "Poof" ("Puff"?), in other words, gay. (And yet he was the one who insisted over and over again in such a way that made it seem he felt even a straight man would do it under certain conditions/circumstances.)

I once heard it said that at least some humor is based on the unexpected. Something suddenly happening that came "out of left field".

Seeing two guys with their heels dug in suddenly change their positions (expecially the one who started the whole thing revealing he feels VERY differently than you'd thought) is abrupt, unexpected, and, because it involves sex (often the basis for standup jokes), it's "funny".

...

Last edited by qawer on 08 Jan 2014, 1:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.

That's not even given conscious thought. He's resonding to the moment, not reasoning out how this will affect his relationship with others. The other guy wouldn't leave him alone, and he finally gave in and replied in a way the "asker" wanted him to.

This shows some people will just give in, not because they think it out and decide it's the thing to do, but because they allow themselves to be overwhelmed. Yep. It can happen to NTs too, given enough overload input.

Yes, something like that. The comedian is making fun of the asker here. The humour is in the length he's prepared to go to in order to "catch" the other person having homosexual tendencies. He creates a hypothetical situation ("if you had to sleep with a man") and repeatedly emphasises the hypothetical nature of it, but then by saying "poof" at the end he completely drops that hypothetical aspect, since he's saying "you are homosexual", not "you would be if ...".

Out of curiosity, why do NTs find playing these games funny?

(I suppose it eventually has to be because it means extremely much for them to be accepted by the crowd)

Some have theorized that this kind of joking between men diffuses insecurity about their sexuality and affirms a cultural norm of heterosexuality within the group. It is rooted in homophobia, in my opinion.