I’ve finished my BA thesis, and I’m leaving the polish for tomorrow. I feel like rambling. My mind falls to the topic of in-jokes in entertainment.
Theoretically, they are bad. You need to create inclusive works, products of entertainment that as large a group of people as possible understand, that draw in a large audience rather than rejecting interested people with a mess of opague references and jokes that pull on background knowledge exclusive to a small group of people.
For a long time, this was the chief concern with TNM, until our testers assured us that the in-joke to out-joke(?) ratio in TNM is quite fine, that all the obscure references are supplied by a healthy helping of regular pop-culture references and normal jokes relying on clever characters being funny. But before that, while we were still worried about being too exclusive, I came to realize that I love in-jokes.
But not just my own. I mean other people’s in-jokes too. In-jokes that technically, I don’t get.
In many cases, it’s enough to realize that something is an in-joke. It’s great if I see other people laugh knowingly – I don’t feel excluded, I enjoy looking in on a community I’m not a part of and observing their culture. Often, when the in-joke in question is encountered on the Internet, I will track down the source of it, attempt to crack it open and figure out what makes it fun, and against common wisdom (jokes aren’t funny if you have to explain them) I’m usually amused upon solving the mystery. I don’t laugh as I might have if I had been in on the joke from the start, but I realize how clever it is and I smile.
Phonogram is an in-joke I’m not in on. I was never a fan of Britpop – when Suede, Blur, and Oasis were big among even my Danish friends, I was discovering Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Megadeth. As I read Rue Britannia, I didn’t know most of the bands they mentioned, I didn’t get even a quarter of the references and jokes, I had to constantly flit to the glossary in the back of the book, but I had no problem with it. It was almost anthropological, examining an artifact from and a tribute to a community that I wasn’t and never had been a part of.
Of course I’m glad that there are so many normal, regular-people jokes in TNM that players who weren’t part of the PDX community around 2002 don’t become annoyed that they’re missing something, but I hope that there are many people like me among our players, who will pick up on the in-jokes and be amused even if they don’t understand them. Because it does add another dimension to the mod when you understand that most of it’s based on the artifacts of a small, in-bred (and long-extinct) community.
Past experience shows me that I don’t really have enough commenters to end my post with a question like this, but I’d quite like to know: What do you think about other people’s in-jokes? Do they amuse you? Do they annoy you? Do they make you feel excluded? Or do you ignore them, knowing they’re not for you? Please take a moment to answer if you have time.
I tend to like in-jokes, as long as they’re not the sole source of humour in whatever medium they’re in. I think that usually in-jokes will go completely un-noticed unless you actually know to look for them. Plenty of the in-jokes in TNM will fly right by most players, although there’re definitely a few that might make people go “huh?”. Not too many, though!
I agree with Larry
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I like inside jokes if I get them, if I don’t get them, I mostly will not notice them anyway. I can confirm that I have not noticed many in-jokes in TNM, being not active on PDX in 2002.
Well that’s reasonably good to hear I guess
Well, TNM does have an extra dimension to me because I’m familiar with many of the characters from the get go; some of them are parodies, and others are clearly pastiche, and I can only tell the difference, I presume, because I’m in the know.
But because it’s now 7 years ago, even though I do remember reading and interacting with pdx, the narrative inherent in the community has almost eroded from my memory. I could probably dig it all out if I really wanted to, but it would be hard.
So even though I re-experience it, it feels a lot like experiencing it for the first time as well…and as far as I can tell, it works out quite well =]
As for in-jokes in general…they tend to annoy me when I don’t have the correct context…a lot of my friends and I quite enjoy reminiscing about family guy episodes and similar silly things, and if you don’t have the context in your mind, it’ll be a very boring 10 minutes of conversation to listen in on.
But I don’t mind them at all in comics and stand up shows or tv series…often, they add spice, and the lack of direction and feeling that there’s something more going on when you don’t get an in joke sometimes adds a degree of realism and unpredictability that I quite like.
I think the presence of in-jokes shows great bond between that community. They light up the atmosphere wherther I’m in that community or just a neighbourgh. I can pick up a good vibe when I feel one.
Whether the joke is annoying of amusing derives from what you feel about the topic or person concerned or about the person or/and society making one. Plus, to justify your call you have to understand the joke. So searching or a lucky link providing you to the source is favorable.