I learned to cut first, and it’s a little something ugly about me.
I got clever at it. I got sneaky. When you compliment and cut at the same time, maybe it doesn’t sting as much. It’s like kissing with a razor blade in your mouth. It’s like stabbing with a knife dipped in novocaine.
…Is that a good one? I can’t tell. I’m hardwired to believe any joke I tell can land an audience member. I guess the fact that I asked Siri the difference between novacaine and lidocaine so I wouldn’t get the joke wrong proves that it’s a bad joke. That didn’t take much detective work.
Their brain should go from that’s imaginable to that’s agreeable as frictionless as possible.
Maybe someone reading will have to think for a minute, “Which one is that again?” That’s not what you want your joke to do: make someone think. Their brain should go from that’s imaginable to that’s agreeable as frictionless as possible. Because once they reach agreeable, they have to express it, i.e., involuntary rhymic gasping. Ha there’s a memoir name!
Anyway, no one wants to have to piece it together. Yeah, that seems to be the measure of the joke. The speed at which a person gets the joke counts a lot. Another factor is the medium. lol at which – I say things like that in real life, ironically only.
Consider that I’m posting this on a platform well known for enticing short attention spans. Who wants to read something longer than a tweet or motivational quote with their phone in their hands? I don’t. I’ll Select All and press Speak faster than a tornado’s easter egg hunt. You don’t want to read something long. I don’t want to record audio because the time from concept to publish is longer than writing, because of the dramatic difference in editing time. And we don’t want to spend an amount of time on a task that exceeds its predicted duration of interest, do we, Governor? ‘Course not. So here we are *tap* *tap*
*tap* I thought of adding subheadings, but I have to be 100 with you: because I didn’t add them while drafting this, I’ve accepted that I must not have cared. I try to trust the instincts of my past and present self. Safe bet.