Deadpan Humor

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I have a "style" of humor that many NTs and I'm sure many ND people cannot discern as humor. I will say something so patently absurd that I figure anyone ought to know I am kidding - but I'll do that with a completely straight face.

Like today at my exercise class, another group was in our space when it was scheduled for us. While the teacher ran to the office to figure out what was going on, I joked - totally deadpan - to an elderly gentleman who does not know me well, "There are more of us than there are of them (people in the other group) - I bet we can beat them up." Mind you, everyone in our group is elderly and I am physically disabled as well. There would be no scenario in which I would ever "rumble" with the other exercise group. The white haired gentleman I told this to did not look me in the eye when I said this, grin, or even show that he heard, although I'm sure he did.

(It turned out they were doing a make-up class for a weather day, and just didn't know they needed to finish up before the end of the hour.}

Later I related this to my husband and he just totally cracked up. He gets my humor; not everyone does.

The valentine card I bought him this year said (front cover): You get me like nobody else gets me. (Inside): I think there might be something wrong with you. He immediately knew it was meant humorously, and we had a good laugh about it. But I would not dare give that kind of card to some people!

Do you have a style of humor, and how would you describe it?

My humor has a lot of word play, can be kinda stupid (Okay, I admit it, I lose it at many dad joke types), and is almost always very dark.
It is very hit and miss, sometimes earning a really good laugh, and other times making people visibility uncomfortable. I've been working on it for years, because at first as a child people would only laugh at things not meant as jokes.

Me too! I have a distinct memory of myself as a little child, maybe 5, saying something which caused my mom and the neighbor lady to laugh. "Don't laugh at me!" I said, and stomped off angrily.

I've had a few dandies. I was at a protest the week I needed a haircut, and a guy who I'd seen around looked at my locks. He was short, and quite bald, wearing a black leather jacket. He caught my eye and, monotone, said "Hippie!" I didn't miss a beat, and shot back an equally flat "Greaser!" He loved it.

A bike store in LA directed me to a "Motel 6" (in '77) but when I got there, it was $9 per night, $6 for 2 hours. I was back a couple of days later, and they asked me how it went. "Oh, the $6 is if you just want a nap." They didn't dare laugh 'till I left.

I was in my usual health food store, where the proprietress was fresh back from a rare vacation. As I had many times before, I slowly scanned the long list of current cheese prices for interesting specials but then asked her for my usual "Two pounds of New Zealand Cheddar, please" This gave me a sense of deja-vu, though, so I added a flat "Welcome home." The helper cracked up.

I think the capper, though, was one night at a catch-all al-anon meeting, there being no ACOA there. I was nervous before the meeting, because the week's topic, barring personal news, was sex. Then, I realized that not only would everyone else be nervous, but that this gave me a perfect setup. We took turns either speaking or passing, so I didn't have to be rushed. We had been meeting so long that over half of us didn't bother with the traditional "I'm Bob, and I'm from a dysfunctional family" or whatever, but it was still good form. I received the stack of reference books that served as a talking stick, and pretended to look at them while casually declaring "I'm Bob, and I'm wearing plain white briefs." Bounced 'em off three walls with six words, and the laugh carried a long way.

You had me laughing but my sense of humor is very dry and sometimes can be wicked so maybe we are two of a kind.

I would have gotten and appreciated both your joke and the card, Bea.

My sense of humor is mostly quoting funny movies- this works really well with my family but not with anyone else, as my family is full of inside movie jokes (for example, we’ve nearly memorized Galaxy Quest). I did used to have a few good math jokes, but I don’t remember them as well as I used to.

People often don't get my humour either, which is arguably a bit of a paradox given that those on the ASD spectrum are 'supposed' to be the ones who don't get the humour of NTs.

This may be one of those "you had to be there", but try to visualize this:

I was in what you might call a "brain-storming" session with a group of business analysts, developers, etc — I have been engaged in an Agile development project for about a year — and in this instance, we were trying to construct scenarios involving a number of different members of a fictitious family. Be aware that a large part of this group I am working with is African-American; it turns out that the fictitious names tended toward what might be considered "typical" African-American names. So this lady was standing at the whiteboard writing the names down, and somebody proposed a "Traci" as part of the scenario, and she started to write it out as "Tracy" — and in a very serious tone of voice I "corrected" her by pointing out that it's spelled with an "i", in response to which she, with an equal degree of seriousness, replaced the "y" with an "i" at which point the room broke into laughter.

At least part of the joke was that this came from me, an older white man, who might be misinterpreted by somebody who hasn't been around me much as a very serious person. In fact, we were recently subjected to an exercise in which we actually had to say how we felt about other members of the group, and the main advice I got was that I should smile more.

P.S. I am very aware that this is quite similar to some of @Dear_one's stories.

I love deadpan humour , it's not easy to do in written form on an autistic website

I was going to post this as a thread , but as I couldn't see anyone's reaction it was pointless , so I'll post here instead.

Q.If you could exterminate any race what would you pick?



















































Personally, I‘d get rid of the 800m. It‘s too long to be considered a sprint and not long enough to really be long distance.

I'm all the times quoting jokes (esp. puns) on social media.

I like the knock-knock jokes if the usual pattern is disrupted, but there aren't too many of them "Who's there? Interrupting cow, Interr... MOO!" or "Control Freak--this is where you say 'Control Freak, who?'"

Also like the "henway" jokes where someone is tricked into saying "What's (a)" in front of an unknown word.
On the interstate, an 18-wheeler smashed this henway all to pieces. What's a henway? About four pounds. Or change it to matterbaby. Oh, nothing, what's the matter with you?