With all this corona business and 2020 being a rollercoaster of emotions, sometimes a good joke is just what you need as a pick me up. Now, here comes the hard part: being funny enough to tell a good joke. Everybody has told a joke that just didn’t land. That may just be because nobody got the joke and you’re actually a comedic genius, but more likely it just wasn’t funny. Sorry to say, but some people are simply not that good at being witty. However, luckily for you, being humorless is not incurable, you just need some training and plenty of failures. Since the number one rule of a joke is to not explain it, I won’t go into the specifics of joke-telling. I will however, give you some tips to up your game.

Something that is funny catches a person off-guard. That’s pretty much the basics of joke-telling. Nobody is going to laugh at the punchline they saw a mile away unless it’s a pity laugh, and if you’re getting a pity laugh, that’s just depressing. Being offensive is an easy way of doing this, but try not to be too offensive or else people will think you’re a prick. Unfortunately, recent events have made people a bit more sensitive, so do be careful. Getting into cancel culture in a joke article would be a pain, so I’ll just hope that you can understand what the line is. Another easy joke is doing the opposite of what someone expects of you. Saying “no” to a question that is obviously a “yes” catches them off-guard as long as it’s obviously a joke. Something a bit harder to do is to just listen to whatever the other person is saying. Crazy, I know. Making an odd comment or pointing something out that amuses you is both funny and shows you’re listening. It’s double the points, funny and showing interest.

Humor is a weird thing, something dumb like a fart shouldn’t be funny but sometimes, it just hits different. You could break down a joke with all the psychology and theories you want but at the end of the day, something that’s funny is just funny.