Anyone else like literal humour?

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I saw a post recently that said "Manners don't cost anything!" and I was tempted to reply "I should hope they don't, imagine if they did, and someone ordering a coffee saying "I'd like a coffee and a have a nice day, please" and the waiter/waitress charged them extra for making them wish the customer to have a nice day", but I didn't because I thought they might take it the wrong way. I was incredibly tempted though, but my friend advised against it.

Also, my friend asked me how I'd reply to someone if I hadn't talked to them in a long time, and they popped up saying "Hey, we should hang out sometime!", and I said "Well, I'd ask if they would like to hang in instead, since it's chilly this time of year", but apparently this might come across as a no. So I've been told.

How about you? Do you like literal humour?

Last edited by Lost_dragon on 26 Nov 2017, 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nice to meet someone with a similar sense of humor. Word play is one of my favorite hobbies, as long as it doesn't devolve into bad puns. Hmm, 'bad puns' sounds a little redundant to me.

Yep. I just made a literal joke, here: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=100526&p=7741127#p7741127

I think for the second one it would depend on if you think the friend would get the joke...like if you and them have joked like that before, or if they'd be more confused by it. I mean I would get it, but there certainly are people that may not and wouldn't be sure if you were turning them down or not. Basically sometimes its better not to come-back with a joke if someone is asking a serious question.

However I don't see anything wrong with the first one...is kind of a funny thought if a waiter/waitress charged you extra for them wishing you a nice time or using manners. Also especially if it was just on a forum the worst that may have happened is it may not have gotten a response so wouldn't have hurt anything.

How about the one about the autistic person who hates change, but loves bills/notes?

I don't believe I've heard/seen that one. Edit: OH, I just got that joke.



Yeah, I got the impression that my friend didn't joke with that person like that...in fact by the sounds of it they aren't particularly close. Bonus fact, the person who my friend got the message from is ADD/ADHD and also has autism, and as for my friend he suspects himself of potentially having ADHD.

Well, the person who commented the whole "manners don't cost anything!", works in retail and she didn't seem to be in a good mood, so a joke response may have annoyed her. Also, my friend thought it might make me sound like I was disagreeing with her (that customers should be polite) but I don't get that at all. The joke was never meant to be dismissive or argumentative, just humorous. I didn't post it anyway, not on her post.

As long as it's an appropriate time to make a good joke, don't pass up the opportunity. If the receiver doesn't have a good sense of humor, then that's their loss. There's nothing wrong with being witty and you shouldn't feel discouraged because someone might not appreciate it.

i do not believe there is such a thing as a literal "sense of humor".
it does not elicit mirthful reactions from most people.
one can have an amusing alternative understanding or "possible interpretation" of something, and when one expresses it in a deadpan way, it becomes more of a cryptic puzzle for others to ponder, but the tempo of general social interaction prohibits much cogitation in social participants.

i can only talk about my "sense of humor".
let's take the "manners cost nothing" comment.

i could take that to mean they are "worthless", and act accordingly with their advice.

there was a story on the news this afternoon which was "8 year old girl heartbroken after theft of her guinea pig"
my immediate thought was " yes the first place to investigate would be a struggling chinese restaurant in the area"

i like road signs myself.

this one i presume demands that you do not travel in a vertical direction.

it therefore is a waste of taxpayers money, and i could ring a radio station and pretend i am an idiot and complain about it.

this one warns me to look out for men trying to close complicated umbrella's whilst crossing the road from right to left.
never seen one. another waste.



this one tells me to drive in circles perpetually


watch out for riderless bicycles that have somehow rolled down a hill and are likely to cross the road from the right.



once i was driving down a one way road the wrong way, and i saw on the road painted a sign saying "one way" with a big arrow, but i did not take any notice of it because as far as i was concerned, it was painted upside down.

whatever.

I did laugh out loud (literally) at your signs, especially the one warning of men trying to close complicated umbrella.

Took a second to make the connection. Thank you for a good laugh.

I liked that too. Guess because Ive had to waist time and space struggling with umbrellas.

Your formula is to go from figurative to literal to get humor. So the first one doesn't work because "manners don't cost a cent" is literal to begin with. Its not an example of what you're talking about.

Second one is cute (whether the other person would take it the right way is another question)because it does conform to the formula because when folks "hang out" they don't literally hang from a clothesline or the like, and they aren't necessarily doing it out of doors. So in that case you are going from the figurative to the literal.

That's true, but I don't know how else you would refer to the first one. The implication is clear (customers should be nice because it isn't hard/ it's socially expected/ that person feels like they should be because in her opinion, people should be respectful and follow manners) whereas my answer would be completely ignoring this implication, and instead take the statement as an invitation for questioning what a hypothetical situation of that would be like in a humorous manner.

Literalist snarker, or literal metaphor, maybe? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... stSnarking

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... alMetaphor

I have always enjoyed any kind of humour involving plays on words or alternative interpretations for symbols/icons.
Here in the UK, the newspapers seem to be particularly good at "crash blossoms" - abbreviated headlines that could mean something different to what they say. A recent one outside the local newsagents was:
Teenager who committed dozens of burglaries in court
Wow! Stealing things while appearing in front of the judge, that's rather bold!

I also have no interest in watching sport, but most of my friends are really into it. So if I'm stuck having to watch a game, I keep myself entertained by listening out for things in the commentary that could be taken a bit too literally.

I also can't help finding it funny when people inappropriately use the word "literally" in conversation when they mean "figuratively", as so many people seem to.

^^^ Have you ever encountered a person using "literally" to emphasize the "literalness" of the expression, even if it's evident that it's "literal?"

Never heard the term "crash blossom" before, but that is a thing. The pressure on editors to make concise headlines produces some rather interesting double meanings.

Some of my favs:

"American sentenced to life in Scotland"

Talk about "cruel and unusual'!



"Solar System to be fixed"

Probably just need give the planet Saturn a good kick!