• KrupskayaPraxis
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    14 days ago

    I’ve been thinking about my social skills and I came to the conclusion I’m way too serious. I know how to have a serious conversation but I’m bad at having fun conversations since I don’t know how to joke around and how to respond to jokes. Must be my autism.

    • amemorablename
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      13 days ago

      I don’t know how much help this will be, cause I’m pretty sure I’m not on the spectrum, so I may have an easier time gauging these things in the moment, but… for what it’s worth, my go-to way to joke around is wordplay.

      For example, if someone said, “This game is top-shelf” (like the saying meaning “high quality”), I might pretend to take it literally and say, “Is it difficult reaching for it when you want to get it down and play it?”

      The nice thing about wordplay is it’s usually pretty harmless as humor goes. Worst that may happen is you get a groan from people who think it’s a stretch (it also might be a stretch reaching for that top shelf game), or you might get people who react to wordplay as something groan worthy in general. The part where it might be difficult if you have trouble gauging the room, is when it’s okay to joke and when not to. But as long as you aren’t doing it at a funeral, or a meeting about a company going down, or someone being in the hospital, grave stuff like that, it’s probably not going to be an issue.

      The way I think about it is, as long as I’m not annoying/offending/upsetting anyone with the jokes, I do it to amuse myself first and if someone else finds it funny too, that’s a bonus. Sometimes the joke doesn’t land, but it can still lead to someone else making a joke, which might get a laugh, or it might get people more in the mood for jokes and then other jokes might get laughs. And then part of it is just knowing an individual too. What kind of funny they’re okay with and when, maybe being a little more constrained with it when talking to strangers or acquaintances, unless you’re confident with handling it. Personally, I don’t have the extroverted confidence to start slinging wordplay with complete strangers in RL, but I can do it just fine around people I know well.