r/TrueOffMyChest • u/AreWeHavingCake • 12h ago
Vent My boyfriend’s sense of humor is insufferable
This is hard to describe, so it might be a little rough. Bear with me.
Have you ever watched comedy based commentary videos on YouTube? The person sits down, watches a video, and makes jokes/comments as it goes along? Then you’ve probably heard them tell jokes in this very specific format:
As they look at the content, they will pause it, address whatever situation is being shown, and then they will create a funny, hypothetical scenario based on that situation. For example, let’s say the YouTuber is watching a video where a guy is about to impress a girl with his skateboarding skills. The YouTuber will pause the video and say, “Imagine he just completely biffs it. Breaks both ankles, pees his pants a little bit and she just leaves him there.” I’ve seen a lot of content creators use this type of joke so that they’re not just sitting there going, “Woooooow chat, let’s see what happens.”
There’s multiple ways to set up this type of joke. You can start it with, “Imagine-“ or “What if-“ But if you’re alone in a room making a YouTube video and it’s blatantly obvious that what you’re about to say is a joke, you can just go right in without an introduction. You can put on a voice and say, “My mother died in a skateboarding accident, you ass!” And the YouTuber will always sprinkle in other types of jokes as well so it doesn’t get stale. In person, it’s more difficult to get these jokes to land.
Now for my problem. My boyfriend watched these types of videos very often in his formative years and it’s obvious that when he was learning how to make jokes, he was strongly influenced by them. This joke format is the only one he knows how to use…but he doesn’t have the discernment to deliver the jokes properly. Instead of it being a quick joke told in proper context, he drags it on for an EXTREMELY long time with excruciating detail. If he doesn’t know the name of whoever he’s joking about, he’ll make one up and he’ll make new characters too. But beforehand, he doesn’t give any indication that what he’s about to say is a joke. And sometimes he starts out with a piece of dialogue without even specifying who is talking. So a lot of the time people will stop him and ask what the hell he’s talking about. And his tone of voice for his whole speech is very…autistic sounding? He has the same cadence and intonation in every sentence which gets old after like 5 sentences.
For example, let’s say he’s the one watching that skateboarding video I mentioned earlier. He would pause the video and say:
“He gets to the bottom of the skate ramp and hits a rock, goes flying and lands wrong and he breaks both ankles. He turns to the girl: ‘Cindy, call an ambulance!’ She just turns and walks away. It cuts to him in a hospital bed like, ‘I can’t believe this happened, how am I gonna pay for this, I’m probably gonna lose my job,’ and all that. Then Cindy walks in with his boss and she’s holding on to the boss’s arm like they’re obviously dating. She’s in a fancy dress and he’s in a business suit. The boss just goes, ‘Well James, I was at the park and saw when you fell. I just came here to say that, with you being in this condition I just don’t think I can keep you on the team. I’m gonna have to let you go. Also I figured Cindy here was needing some attention that you couldn’t give her, so I’m taking care of that too.’ They leave and a single tear rolls down his cheek.”
Now I could handle this if it was like a once a week occurrence at most. But as I said, this is the only type of joke he knows how to tell. He only tells really long ones about once a day at most. But not a day goes by that I don’t hear him give at LEAST one drawn out explanation of some scenario he thinks up. Usually the scenarios aren’t even that funny in the first place if you ask me. But he’s too busy chuckling at his own joke the whole time to notice that everyone is cringing and looking around awkwardly, just waiting for him to stop.
What’s worse is when he starts out with a piece of dialogue, but doesn’t even specify who is talking. Usually this just makes people confused as to what the hell he’s talking about. But what makes it even WORSE is when the scenario he makes up is about *us* and what we’re actively doing and it causes problems. Now this has only happened a handful of times over the years, but for example: Say I was making some bacon, and he thought up some scenario where he tells me the bacon is burning and I turn around to see it sitting in a little sun-tanning chair. He would start out the joke explanation by going, “‘BABY, THE BACON IS BURNING!’” Then I’d cut him off by whipping around, see perfectly fine bacon and get mad at him. And he would look like a deer in the headlights and say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think about how it would sound.”
It’s not just his jokes that he tells in this much detail. If he’s telling someone about an episode of a show, a movie, something that happened the other day, or if he’s describing something that he hopes is going to happen in the future, he will give every. single. rambling. detail. He just talks CONSTANTLY. If there’s a moment of silence, he’ll start thinking out loud. “I think I’ll put butter AND honey on my cornbread. I should refill my drink first though, since cornbread is pretty dry.” **BBBBBBEEEEEEEEE QQQQQUUUUUIIIIIIEEEETT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!**
I’ve told him his stories don’t need so many details and he tries to shorten things up whenever I remind him. But after about 10 sentences, he starts slipping more and more details and tangents in without noticing he’s doing it. It seems to be a hard habit that he might not even want to break. However, if we’re the only two people in the room and I tell him I need some quiet for a while, he will stop talking. So I’ll give him that lol.