[dllthomas]

Ah. I think you're drawing a reasonable distinction.

Though I certainly wouldn't say everyone (or even most) need to find it funny to "sound like a joke" in the sense you meant. Surely, there are bad jokes that sound like bad jokes. I think it's probably correct to say that most should "immediately know it is a joke".

All of that said, whether that's likely to be the case in this instance depends on a lot of context that wasn't specified.