
“How my lame joke saw me fall foul of the campus zealots” - jseliger
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/how-my-lame-joke-saw-me-fall-foul-of-the-campus-zealots/
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commandlinefan
Being a very literal-minded programmer type that I am, when I was young, I
would always state pretty much exactly whatever was on my mind. Inevitably,
somebody would ask "what do you mean by that?" I was confused by the
question... I meant what I said - why would I say something other than what I
meant? But over time I caught on to some unspoken, unwritten, apparently
unnoticed by most social cues and rules that you're supposed to abide by, one
of which is "joking around". With a lot of practice, I've actually gotten
pretty good at it, even though it feels completely alien to me: while I've
gotten the knack of saying what I'm trying to say without actually saying it
and deciphering what other people are trying to say, I would much prefer a
world where everybody just said literally what they meant. Partly because,
sometimes, I completely blow it. I overlooked one of them any possible double
entendres in something that I said and, _of course_, everybody just assumed
that I was going for the double entendre, because that's how most people
actually talk. That's what makes all of this overreaction to simple jokes so
disconcerting - you HAVE to talk and act this way and "joke around" with
people, or else you become Dwight from "The Office". There's no opting out,
and the stakes for missing just one cue become greater with each passing day.

