41 Things That A Close Person Said As A Joke But Not Everyone Around Was Actually Laughing

A few days ago, in the AskMen community, the user u/austerbear posed the following question to netizens: "Fellas, what's something a loved one has said to you that was supposed to be funny or playful but actually stung a little?" As of today, the resulting thread has over 9.6K upvotes and around 1.8K various comments, so it will be quite interesting to see what we have there.

By the way, the thread contains stories not only of unfortunate remarks from significant others, but also from friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and even just random folks and kids. As it turns out, people's perceptions of humor, or even compliments, can vary greatly - so please feel free to check out this selection made for you by Bored Panda!

Let's start with the fact that people have completely different ideas about what is funny (and what is not), what can be considered offensive, and what can genuinely be taken as a compliment. People have different cultural traditions, different temperaments, and, ultimately, different senses of humor.

Finally, people's emotional backgrounds can also vary. Some of us are able to read other people's body language and subconsciously notice the slightest changes in facial expressions - while others have no idea about any of this. Incidentally, with the development of modern technology, these skills are gradually becoming obsolete.

Many researchers attribute the decline in people's emotional intelligence to the ever-increasing amount of time spent communicating on social media and instant messaging apps. Indeed, when you don't need to vary your voice to convey your emotions, when you don't need to "read" your interlocutor's facial expressions, emotional intelligence isn't really necessary.

And the interlocutor's face itself is often just a collection of pixels on a screen. But then, returning to the real world, people retain these communication patterns for real-life interactions, preferring, in fact, online communication.

For example, the authors of this study published back in 2018 claim that only 24% of teenagers surveyed considered people or human relationships as important in life, yet only 2.5% felt that community was important in life. So where, one wonders, would developed emotional intelligence skills come from in such situation?

But why do some people say something genuinely funny without offending anyone, while others, especially when trying to imitate them, seem completely weird and awkward? On the one hand, it may be a genuine natural talent and predisposition for humor.

"In addition to being skilled at toying with people's expectations, people who are funnier than most may exhibit qualities such as a willingness to take risks when making jokes and a sensitivity to how their attempts at humor are perceived," this dedicated article at Psychology Today claims reasonably.

Furthermore, experienced stand-up comedians have long since discovered a proven strategy for good humor that doesn't offend anyone. Simply laugh at yourself - and then it's unlikely anyone will take even the most offensive pun personally. At least you know exactly what's offensive to you and what isn't.

Anyway, we're quite confident that reading this collection of stories, if it doesn't do you any favors in terms of developing your emotional intelligence, will at least make your time a tad bit more interesting. So now, please feel free to read this list to the very end, and maybe add your own related tales in the comments below - in case you have something to say of course.