Positively Glorious!

I have this habit of playing a silly game that I call “The Deep Joke.” The name is a bit of a “thought train,” but basically comes out of a childhood search for meaning and an album called “Deep Breakfast,” itself named after a book.

Anyway, when I was a child, I learned something about comedy. I learned that there were things called “jokes.” I know, it’s not revolutionary, but to me it was pretty amazing, because as soon as I learned about jokes, I started– as is my wont– pushing the boundaries of them.

Very quickly I found that the concept went deeper than I thought. Because most jokes were about something. That’s like the fundamenal joke. The simple joke. A comment about something. They’re fun, sure, but I wanted more.

Maybe it’s because of my father, and his semi-Indian-incredibly-subtle-always-multiple-meanings form of communication, or maybe it’s just because I really liked jokes. Whatever the reason, slowly, I came to realize that it was much more fun to be had if you didn’t limit yourself to simply making jokes about something. It was possible to make jokes about about something.

It became my habit to make what I started to call “deep jokes.”

I know, it always confused my family too, and still confuses many people. To me, though, it’s the natural way to make a joke.

Jokes About About Something

You see, most jokes are about something, and the joke itself is a comment on that something. It’s a way that everyone can laugh about that something, whatever the something is. Sometimes, the something is a someone, and the joke is a way for everyone to laugh at that someone.

Sometime in high school, I started practicing subtle jokes about things and people that were aimed not at pointing out the flaw in that thing or person, but in pointing out something funny about the people laughing about that thing or person. It was a joke about the joke.¹

My first attempts, as any first attempts are, were clumsy. But quite soon, I was able to craft a joke that seemed to make fun of something or someone on the surface, while in reality it was actually questioning the very opposite.

Now, this got me into a lot of difficulty with my family, and not a few arguments were had with immediate and extended family and friends because of it. The problem: While it was becoming more and more natural (and automatic) with me, it was still a concept foreign to them. So I’d make a joke or comment that, deep down, supported someone and that someone would take it as an insult.

The Deep Joke and Social Media

This part of communication is now as much a part of me as any. Both in joking and in seriousness, I’m a really subtle, multiple meaning thinker who weighs words more heavily than he would gold. This is becoming something of a comic situation lately because of the phenomena of social media.

The general rule for me is “take everything someone says, turn it around at look at it from the back, then turn it upside down, after you do that, you have the meaning.” The general rule for social media is “take those 6 words completely on the surface, and immediately move on to the next thing.” The problem, of course, is that there’s little time– and no body language– to put things in context with social media.

Despite that, however, I still do the same thing I’ve always done. I’ve been pretty good at keeping things on the surface, but often, I forget.

Today I made a joke that’s meant mostly to laugh at a fundamentalist view of some ridiculous thing that I don’t think anyone should really care about. Yet, thinking about that in the context of social media, I really suspect that nobody got the joke.

It’s not really a deep joke kind of situation, social media.

A Question of Responsibly

This is the reason that I’ve been reluctant recently to friend certain people on Facebook, and why I’ve even considered making two accounts. Because I really like a deep form of communication. I like the play on words and meaning. I like saying multiple things with one statement, and turning things upside down.

I like the deep joke.

Apparently, Jessie’s mom was upset when I wouldn’t friend her on Facebook– even though not doing so was Jessie’s request. Through the family grapevine, I’ve found that I’m not a nice person for refusing.

Should I have accepted? A difficult question. I know from our regular communication that 60% of what I write will either offend or upset her even though barely 5% would have anything at all to do with her².

So, where’s the responsibility of communication? Am I to communicate as myself, or as something that I think others want? We are all part of a society, of course, so it is our responsibility to not to go out of our way to hurt other people’s feelings, but is the responsibility solely on the writer?

I mean, I understand that it’s my responsibility to say “You know, this is a direct attack on so-and-so, maybe that’s not the best thing to write.” But is that the end of the responsibility? That’s a hard line for a writer to stay behind because heading down the “this may possibly offend so-and-so, but that may also not sit well with such-and-such” would lead a writer to just stop writing.

I’m not sure which way to go on this. It’s something that, lately, has been causing me to write less on Positively Glorious! and more about programming, just because I know I’m safer, and not likely to offend someone with a post that has nothing to do with them.

I’ve written on this before, of course, but it’s still something I’m trying to come to grips with. Sometimes in social media, it seems that The Deep Joke just may not be funny to anyone.

1. Funny that I changed my name so late in life, because at that early age I was training to be a metta-comic… Wa-wa-waaaa [↩]
2. likely, that 5% wouldn’t actually overlap with the 60%, ironically [↩]