Timeline for When you tell a joke and nobody laughs
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 12, 2017 at 6:40 | vote | accept | Yuri | ||
| Jan 29, 2017 at 19:18 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A | Know your audience is a great maxim and as the adage says: Can't please all the people all of the time azquotes.com/picture-quotes/… and that goes for English language sites too. Someone, somewhere will be offended,and that is a certainty. I don't find "I fell on my ass" or its derivatives (e.g. I felt like an ass [donkey]) to be offensive in the slightest. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 19:05 | history | edited | Andrew | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 537 characters in body
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| Jan 29, 2017 at 18:45 | comment | added | Andrew | @Jasper I understand your concern, I just don't agree with it. But it's probably better to discuss this in /meta instead. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 16:46 | comment | added | Jasper | @Andrew you're missing my point. Sure, it may be used a lot, and you may consider it okay to use with children. That does not mean that you can use it in any situation: you can't. Providing a phrase that has a problem of not being usable in (some) professional situations is laying a trap for the language learner, especially if there are perfectly valid alternatives that do not have the same problem. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 16:22 | comment | added | Andrew | @Jasper I can't help if you, personally, "don't care", but the actual point is that this is a common expression that can appear in a family-oriented movie deemed suitable for children. Like the ubiquity of "fart jokes" in children's movies, standards have changed whether you like it or not. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 16:18 | comment | added | Jasper | @Andrew I don't care about arbitrary rating systems for movies (I think they are broken to begin with). I do care about whether something is inappropriate in some situations. An example of a situation where this wouldn't be acceptable would be a meeting with a representative of a firm that is a customer of the company where you work. (Or depending on where you live, even just talking to your manager.) | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 15:32 | comment | added | David K | "Stick up their butts" is (at best) extremely informal. On the other hand, if someone says, "I felt like an ass," I think of the legitimate English word for the animal, not of the slang word for the body part. | |
| Jan 29, 2017 at 9:00 | comment | added | Michael Geary | I agree with @Jasper that talking about "sticks up their butts" is usually inappropriate here. It's not just because of the expletive: in the right situation, it may be very funny. (But be careful to know your audience!) The real reason is that this phrase shifts the blame for the failed joke from the joke-teller to the audience. If you want to be a successful comedian, or a successful communicator of any sort, don't blame your audience if they don't get the joke, or the story, or whatever your message is. Instead, look at how you could tell it better next time. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 18:41 | comment | added | Andrew | @Jasper while I understand your concern the language is nothing that wouldn't appear in a PG-rated movie. "Expletive" doesn't mean what it used to. | |
| Jan 27, 2017 at 12:40 | comment | added | Jasper | While the rest of the answer is really good, I'm not really a fan of (suggesting) the use of unnecessary expletives. Suggesting things like feeling like an ass and stick up their butts adds complexity in deciding whether the context is right for such a phrase, while wanted to crawl under a table or something like don't know fun when it stares them in the face can be used in practically any situation | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 18:51 | comment | added | Andrew | @Yuri Oh yeah, sure. "I felt like crawling under a table" just means you were really embarrassed, so any context is fine. | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 18:49 | comment | added | Yuri | @Andrew it's not a joke. I'm describing a defferent context which A and C are taking about D and admiring D, while B overhears and thinks they're admiring him ( B). Then B awkwardly jump in telling A, "thank you ( for admiring me)"... A looks at B and says, " I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about D"... I wonder if in this context B can later say, " Oh man I just wanted to go crawl under a table." or any of those expressions that you put up there. | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 18:36 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Andrew: If there was one, it fell flat on me too! :) | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 18:33 | comment | added | Andrew | @Yuri I'm not sure of the joke? | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 18:10 | comment | added | Yuri | Brilliant, thanks a lot. Now that you're here, can I use fell flat or any of those expressions that you mentioned here, too? Context: B overhears A and jumps in the conversation A: I really liked the way he jumped over that thing B: Thanks A: No, I didn't mean you. I meant Chris. | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 18:01 | history | answered | Andrew | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
