this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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I wish people stopped putting punchlines before the setup.
I think in this case it works well enough.
Most comedy works by subverting expectations. And sometimes you can shift the burden of establishing these expectations to the audience by offering an unclear and vague statement, that later is revealed to be the punchline to the joke.
There is a certain risk involved because how well the joke works on an individual basis is a question of how imaginative or unimaginative the audience is (depending on how the joke is constructed).
A joke that relies on lack of imagination basically turns the audience into their own straight man. While the joke that relies on imagination banks on you being the straight man to the flights of fancy of your audience.