Some things that are completely obvious to me, others fail to understand. This also works in the reverse order with some things being obvious to others while I’m clueless (like why people choose to own cats).
I’m indifferent on roasts. What started as a way for old friends to poke fun at someone they enjoy and respect turned into a spectacle with people you barely know roasting washed up people, everyone desperately trying to humiliate each other. They’re the type of thing you might laugh at but then feel bad afterward.
Then there was Norm MacDonald roasting Bob Saget.
After about two of Norm MacDonald’s jokes, I thought was he did was brilliant. He was telling horrible jokes on purpose. When everyone is scraping the bottom of the barrel for a joke about the persons dead mother, doing another shocking joke isn’t that shocking. It’s expected. So when Norm MacDonald goes in completely the opposite direction, people weren’t sure what to think. After two jokes, I could tell what he was doing, as could many others. But even after the roast, some people thought he went nuts. They couldn’t believe he could do such a terrible job at the roast. They didn’t understand his jokes at all. Turns out the jokes he told were from an old joke book his Dad gave him. A lot of them were meant for when someone was retiring.
What Norm did was obvious to me, others didn’t get it. Explaining it doesn’t seem to make it funny either. If you took someone who didn’t get it the first time around and told them what he was doing, they’d likely only give you an “Oh…” not a “Let’s watch it again.” I’m not sure if any joke that has to be explained can be funny. People just need to hear it and if they can’t process it automatically, you’ve lost them.