created 2025-04-21, & modified, =this.modified
rel: Jokes - Control Language - Islands Picture doesn’t do it justice Laughter Power and Dismissive lol
What is that joke sense where you can feel the possibility of a joke, through pun or connection or some other language feature, but it doesn’t surface in a memorable way?
I find a connection between refurbished and furbies.
You say “feels like there’s a joke in there” as a kind of lack of creative effort, and acknowledgement. This statement, so often used, serves a kind of deflated meta-joke in itself (some minor sense of laughter is felt, or puzzling-sense where there could be none.)
But maybe there is also some joke in that absence where you actually feel something. If you always decide to abandon jokes within your company, instead of plainly stating your humorous joke you adopt the placeholder “feels like there’s a joke in there”.
You might not even smile anymore, completely abandon the gesture, instead saying aloud “feels like there’s a joke in there” while groups of other humans in place of a smile.
No further jokes are stated besides this phrase. Till you one day leave it absence, in the perfect comedic moment where a joke would apply, obvious to all and granted to you on a silver platter.
If…only…you..could…
You say nothing. And they laugh.