How to be Funny

Some of my friends are funny, others aren’t. When you’re not funny and you actually think you are, it’s pretty much a disaster. One of my co-workers is like this. It’s like he intentionally does all the unfunny things when he’s trying to make you laugh. He’s a great guy but his jokes are just painful. We laugh with him to avoid breaking rapport but drop him in a situation where he barely knows anyone and he’s gonna blow out bad.

You don’t have to be funny to be a fun person but it doesn’t hurt either. If you’re one of those unfunny blokes, you can consciously watch out for some things to become a little funnier. Maybe do a 7-day or 30-day trial of it, see if you can integrate into your personality.

Here are a few ideas you can use to adjust your humor for better results in social situations.

1. Stop trying to make people laugh. Trying is dying. Instead, do it for your own amusement or do it to find out if you can make yourself laugh or any other reason that wouldn’t involve getting validated by other people’s reaction.
2. Think playful instead of funny. If it’s hard for you to wrap your head around the idea of being funny, try being playful instead. Imagine you have an audience of your little nieces and nephews. Then mess around with them.
3. Don’t laugh before delivering your punchline.
4. Tell knock knock jokes without the “Knock! Knock!” Doing the whole knock, knock bit just announces that you are going to tell a joke. It diminishes momentum and surprise.
5. Put pauses in your setup. Just as in all manners of speaking, you hook people to listen when you put pauses in speech.
6. Always pause before the punchline.
7. Make funny faces by exaggerating your point facially. While most stand-up comics thrive on deadpan faces, in social situations I get bigger laughter with exaggerated facial expressions that compliment the punchline. This works especially well if you’re really cute, the contrast you create is amazing!
8. If nobody laughs, pretend you weren’t cracking a joke. Just ignore it and pretend you were making a serious statement instead. You’re not on stage so you’re not trying to be funny all the time.
9. If nobody laughs and they look at you funny, wink at them or scream something totally random like “Hotdog!” or “Chicken Syrup!”
10. Sex jokes are always funny if delivered tastefully. If you make a funny innuendo directed at someone, only do it once within ten minutes. Do it twice and you’re trying to embarass them. Do it thrice and it’s obvious you’re at a loss for funny things to say.
11. If you cracked something funny earlier, it’s ok to mention the punchline again later. Callback humor is great for at least two repeats. Any more and you risk being trite.
12. Callback earlier punchlines that weren’t funny. Making fun of something that was not funny can be funny. For example, nobody laughed when someone said that a guy is so fat he can eat a whole table. You can follow-up by saying it’s wrong, he is so fat he can actually eat 10 fat guys eating tables!
13. Never pass on an opportunity to make a side-comment. If nobody laughs, do #7 or #8.

Technorati Tags: Be Funny, Jokes, Humor