I think one of the worst feelings in the world has to be when you deliver a hilarious joke...but for some reason the only thing you hear is silence. Then there's the awkward dilemma: do you try to explain it and risk further mortification or just let it slide and hide your head in shame? I guess I had it coming – I did, after all, judge two of my professors on this very blog for the same embarrassment.
Before we delve into my comedic masterpiece, let's rewind a bit. I'm one of the five proud Berkeley ThunderCoqs trying to bring Berkeley glory and honor in the Dance-Off at the Freshman Olympics. At rehearsal, we were practicing the first half of our dance to The Pussycat Dolls' song "Beep". Seeing as it's set at Toad's, we really wanted to make it as realistic as possible: no Toad's experience would be complete without the creepers! Part of the dance involves me pushing the face of a "creeper" who's trying to dance inappropriately with me.
Now fast forward to supper that same night, right after practice. My friend (who's a total creeper – in the dance, that is) made a comment about being creepy. While I can't my response, I do recall that at the end it involved pushing his face away, just like in the dance. We both looked at each other, smiling, for a few seconds, after which he commented, "You almost pulled that off."
But why only almost? What was I missing? When I reflected back on it, I realized that I knew that I was referencing the dance, and I thought my friend understood too, but I couldn't be sure. Which reminded me of a Master's Tea with Steven Pinker, where he talked about innuendos and how language is recursive. That is, you and someone else can both know something, but you don't actually know that the other person knows, or that they know you they know, etc. Not knowing this makes us cautious because if it turns out that what we both "know" are two different things, our social relationship may be changed, which is a very uncomfortable experience for humans.
I think this idea can be applied to certain failed jokes, particularly ones that reference a shared experience. If both parties laugh, it can be assumed that you were both on the same page[1]. However, if laughter's lacking, there's clearly been a gap in communication. This, in turn, leads to uncertainty. The receiver of the joke may either understand what was being referencing and just not find it funny, or could have simply missed the reference. This puts the joker-teller's ego in a precarious situation. By explaining the joke, you risk further embarrassment upon realizing that the other person knew what you were talking about the whole time – they didn't find it funny the first time and unfortunately nothing has changed upon reiterating it. Even if they didn't get the reference the first time, explaining it is no guarantee that they'll even find it funny. Instead, it could just serve as a reminder of how bad the joke was in the first place.
In this way, it's this issue of not being on the same page as the joke-receiver that leads to uncertainty and discomfort. It's possible that my friend understood my reference but the joke itself wasn't funny. Or he may have just failed to understand that I was referencing our dance – however, while explaining this may have led to an outburst of laughter, it's also possible that the situation could have become even more awkward if he told me that he did understand and just really did not enjoy the joke. The potential pain my ego would feel if this were the case trumped the slight chance that I would be able to redeem myself if he had simply missed the reference.
Certainty leads to a confident delivery, and this is key for a joke to be appreciated. While it hurts when your joke isn't as well-received as you envisioned it, you're probably better off just letting it go instead of risking further mortification.
[1] Even if you weren't on the same page, you still ended up laughing. Therefore you would have no idea that you laughed at different things, so this point is irrelevant.
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