[jerf]

To the entire thread below this, to understand what people around you are doing, you need to understand that there are elements of human communication in which people are deliberately ambiguous. (Not always conciously, but quite deliberately.) It's a huge element of all of the standard human courtship rituals (all the real ones, not the ones that people claim to be using), it's used to speak in plausibly deniable ways for everything ranging from crimes to minor social incidents. The ambiguity itself is part of the message being sent.

Most people actually are very precise in their texts and speech. It's just that the message-carrying layer isn't in the denotations or even the connotation, but the way in which connotations are used. (Humans are amazing things at times.)

(I'm practicing. I have two high-functioning still-pre-teen autist children that I fully expect to have to convey to them an explicit model of human social interactions as they get older. I'm already having to start; the younger really, really wants to be funny. We're actually making some progress. Not, I mean, necessarily a lot of progress... but there is some progress. I'm not saying everyone below is autistic; I have no ability to judge that from here. I'm saying I need practice trying to explain this stuff because I personally definitely do have some autists in my life who will have this problem in the future.)

[iamcurious]

Hey Jerf, maybe this helps. A good recipe for laughter, is to mix a danger signal with a safety signal. The signals might be physical, like almost falling or tickles. The signals might be grammatical, puns (mistaking one word for another). The signals might be social, things that almost can't be said. I'm sure you can think of examples.

Now, always send safety signals ahead, first build trust and pay attention to how others perceive danger. Make a hypothesis of what signals would work, and test them. Laughter is a great teacher.

[jerf]

That is good, thanks.

I wonder if there is a pre-existing manual for this sort of thing already published? A quick Amazon search didn't produce anything I was looking for.

[iamcurious]

Well, there are guides, but none good enough that I remember. More generally, not specifically about humor, but about that kind of vision of human nature, read The Naked Ape.