Crossing the fuzzy grey line of humour

Anybody who knows me will know that I love to try and make people laugh. At school is was predicted I’d be a comedian. Computers came along and changed that path for me.

But, it’s still within me.

The thing about humour is that everyone has lines in the sand where humour doesn’t land with them – topics that are unacceptable. People often making sweeping statements that particular jokes aren’t funny, but that’s never true – a joke is always funny to at least one person, if only the person delivering it. Humour means different things to different people after all.

What the person is saying is that the joke wasn’t funny to THEM. That doesn’t make the person delivering the joke wrong.

And when that line is crossed between 2 people, how do you best deal with it?

The first thing that is often forgotten is that this a 2-way situation. The person feeling offended, though, often feels this is the fault of the other person and they have no responsibility here.

You can joke about anything, but not with anyone. 

Jimmy Carr

So, I’m going to give two genuine, personal examples where I made a joke that overstepped the line with somebody…

Person 1. Took me to one side, explained that the joke was an area that was touchy for them so asked that I didn’t make such jokes about them. I apologised, they said no apology was needed as I wasn’t to know that. I promised to avoid doing it in future. We hugged, walked away and our relationship remains strong to this day.

Person 2. Took me to one side, told me they didn’t like the joke. Told me it was unacceptable. I apologised. They took the apology but kept bringing up the issue and how it was wrong. The relationship broke down.

The only difference between these 2 is how the other person responded. There was no more I could do in either instance – as mentioned, I had no way of knowing that they’d have an issue with the joke I made (in both cases it wasn’t rude or offensive, so not something that could have been predicted).