Anatomy of an Inside Joke

Hopefully the people that have interacted with me a good deal have figured out that I’m not serious a lot. In fact, most of the time I am joking around. This probably has something to do with my family, we’re always doing crazy stuff, and I’m ok with that. This has lead to a lot of inside jokes for my family and I. Now I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m not the only person that has inside jokes, but I do have some shared inside jokes. Since I was actually part of making something funny at the time it occurred at some point in my life, I know a little about the process. For me, it normally starts with a serious statement, even though it can be a sort of commentary on how the world is viewed, it is normally said in a serious fashion. A lot of the time the phrase that makes up the core of the joke is silly in and of itself, which can lead to an initial bout of laughter. But then, after everything that has lead up to the key sentence, it finally sinks in and people laugh at the sheer absurdity of the idea. And many times, at the end, people are just laughing because other people are laughing. You see them laughing and remember how funny the joke was, then you’re laughing, then you see them again and somehow that’s funny again… and if you do it right, this one simple, often silly, joke can keep you laughing for years (not continuously though, because that would be bad). And nobody else will think that it is as funny as the people that were there that initially started the joke, in fact most people won’t think it is funny at all. They’re all left outside your inside joke.

So Scott Thought.