Bad Jokes Told Well
Andrew Stanton on David Perell's How I Write podcast:
I've come to a place in life where I've really realized that the telling is just as important as the content....How you tell something can often be the reason you're enjoying it more than what's being said.
You can have a really good joke told poorly. I'd rather have a really bad joke told well.
In the preface to How Music Works, David Byrne discusses how the same piece of music can be either "an annoying intrusion, abrasive and assaulting, or you could find yourself dancing to it". For Byrne, it all depends on "where you hear it – in a concert hall or on the street – or what the intention is".
For Byrne, context is not packaging. It changes the thing itself.
Playful things have the same problem.
Play does not happen in a vacuum. Games, toys, vertical videos, rituals: they happen in a room, a mood, a feed, a group chat, a sofa, a commute, a field.
The context questions are part of the work:
- Who is it for?
- How is it discovered?
- Where is it played?
- Who is it played with?
- What does it ask people to perform?
- How does it feel?
These are not packaging questions.
They are part of the experience.
An amusement is not just the thing you make. It is the situation: the trigger for experience.