Help me solve a dilemma that has nagged me for many years.<\/p>\n
I went to see a performance. Right near the beginning, one of the performers chose a member of the audience in the front row, and asked him a question.<\/p>\n
The audience member was quick-witted. He immediately replied with a funny answer. The audience ate it up – me included. That guy was funny! We laughed…. we applauded… and then we learnt the truth…<\/p>\n
The audience member soon took his rightful place on stage. He was a plant – one of the performers had been sitting with the audience members.<\/p>\n
With weeks to plan and rehearse the response, suddenly the humour wasn’t as strong. The laugh was largely because of how strong the impromptu<\/em> joke was; how the picked-upon, under-dog, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God audience member had bravely stood up in the face of the mean performer and delivered an off-the-cuff retort.<\/p>\n So, here’s my dilemma. Was the episode still funny? <\/p>\n I feel slightly ripped off, and yet I can’t deny that I was laughing uproarishly at the time.<\/p>\n Does it make sense for me to claim that the revelation was anti-funny – that it sucked out the humour that was originally there? Or do I have to simply admit that it was a fun night was had… and so was I?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Help me solve a dilemma that has nagged me for many years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-thoughts-from-the-shower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}