Most of those mentioned above are not intended to be funny, just great entertainment. We find, though, so much more Internet humour in the chat rooms and the personals sites, especially if we do not enter these sites with the idea that they are all being used by honest and upright people. Usually, these sites are not the venues of humourists, tellers of jokes or the class clowns from a local school.
Personals sites are intended to help people find their soul mates or people with whom to be friends. Any attempts at online humour on these sites often are simply ice breakers to more intimate conversations to follow after the two know each other better. One of the two who are chatting may tell a joke or make a wisecrack, but its purpose is usually to show himself or herself as a friendly and jovial person rather than a geek.
To find the real Internet humour, one must read between the lines of what is being typed. There are many methods being used by less-than-honest chatters on the personals sites to avoid telling the truth.
“Do you live alone?” It is the question of one of the two who are chatting on a personals site. Most likely, the person asking the questions wants to know if the other person is married or has a live-in partner. The expected response is either, “Yes” or “No”. If the response is, “I’m alone”, the Internet humour has begun. That response is an attempt to avoid an honest answer. Such a response could have several meanings. It could mean that the partner or wife is not at home at the moment. It could also be used by someone in an Internet café who did not bring his wife or partner with him.
Sometimes the person using a personals site places a photo in his or her profile. Some of these pictures are obviously intended to be funny. Placing a photo of an easily identified Hollywood personage instead of oneself is clearly not intended to be taken seriously. Anyone on the personals site would quickly recognize that the photo is not of the site’s client and would be taken as a joke. This is mildly funny. There are those, however, who place a very much outdated photo of themselves instead of a more recent one on their profiles. Others even put a photo of a better looking person on the profile and allow the personals site’s clients to mistaken believe that the photo is legitimate, an actual likeness of the other client.
If the two ever meet for a first date, the Internet humour reaches its height. How can someone explain the difference between the photo and the real person? No doubt, it is done with lies. “The personals site must have mistakenly printed someone else’s photo on my page,” would be one possible excuse. Another may be something to the effect of having gained weight or having lost weight since the photo was made.
A high point in personals sites’ humour is watching the uncomfortable squirming of the guilty party when he or she is caught. The deception deserves to be revealed. The author of this article loves to watch, actually to enjoy, the embarrassment of the culprit when he or she is caught.