I joke, therefore I am.
This might sound like an exaggeration, but if you eliminate my bad jokes (and GOATed accent), my personality is honestly no different from that of a mere refrigerator.
My jokes are so incredibly bad that my humour could probably be the reason the whole world’s government collapses one day. Jokes, leave that apart; the timing, my delivery timing, is so awful it definitely deserves an Oscar at this point. Like, how can someone be so good at being so bad? But strangely, it’s the very thing that holds my personality (or personalities) together.
But point to be noted: my jokes aren’t things I think of first, create, and store safely in my mind palace (Sherlock reference). They’re things that just… happen. You know, like earthquakes. Okay, well, that was too much; let’s say food poisoning. They just come out, erupt. They fail. And the most interesting part? They cause havoc.
But they also have the potential to pull off several magic tricks (Prince… Prince… Prince…).
They transform the world from feeling like an extremely difficult video game boss battle into a somewhat chaotic, slightly buggy open-world game in which the NPCs sometimes look at you and smile.
Laughter is the shortest distance between two humans.
Victor Borge
Honest confession: I don’t make bad jokes just to show off to someone. I do it because silence frightens me more than ghosts, mid-sems, or the low-battery warning my cute phone gives me when I’m outside.
My humour is like a Swiss Army knife for my emotions; confused? Joke. Stressed? Joke. Existential dread? Joke.
It’s not avoidance; it’s survival at this point. Every joke I crack has a small, underfed, unpaid human behind it; a weary one, but a hopeful being holding up a cardboard sign that reads:
“Hey. Life is strange and short. Let’s laugh it off before it devours us.”
Sometimes, someone actually does laugh, and that feeling… it’s so peacefully amazing. Like, bro? I? I made you laugh?
Not always at the joke itself; let’s not get delusional. Sometimes they laugh because I’m putting so much effort into it that it turns into a full documentary on anthropology (or I make some divine cosmological facial expressions with it).
But it does the job. It communicates. It lets two strangers feel a little less like separate planets. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, honestly.
Tell me your top 3 music artists, and I’ll tell you who you are.
Now over to my favourite part of the article: my music preference is basically my emotional life story. My playlists are so diverse they feel like the cast of a South Indian movie; the kind that hires actors so randomly it catches you off guard every 25 minutes.
One moment I’m enjoying old Bollywood that probably smells like your dad’s cologne, the next moment I’m in my Thar with peak (yes, I mean PEAK) Haryanvi music blasting, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, I find myself playing Frank Ocean; the switch being so wild that even my Jaat ancestors shake their heads in disappointment (wow, what we’ve evolved into).
But that’s how I get through tough times… with music. It heals what the jokes can’t. It comforts my brain when life refuses to go smoothly. It reminds me I’m not the only idiot trying to make sense of living.
If you remove my music taste, then I don’t have the map that shows me who I’ve been, who I am, and who I might become. Music makes me predictable; it can literally forecast anything, like whether I’ll eat three almonds a day and be emotionally stable by 2049. (Bad joke. SEE WHAT I DID THERE?)
Humour is just tragedy dressed like a clown.
Charlie Chaplin
Without my bad jokes and god-tier playlists, who am I?
Well, theoretically, I am still myself, just a more boring DLC version. Because these two things, humour and music, aren’t just random stuff I conjured up when I was bored or ran out of ideas for an article.
They’re the ways I keep myself from becoming stone cold in a world that is constantly trying to make everyone tough. They’re how I try to connect with people I will never fully understand but, for some reason, still care about. They’re the ways I say:
“Hey, I’m alive. You’re alive. Let’s make this pain of existence a little less painful, together.”
If being a hero means saving every building that’s falling, then cool. But if being human means making someone smile at 2 PM with a stupid joke, and making someone feel seen at 2 AM… I’ll choose that version of heroism every time.
Because without my bad jokes and excellent music taste?
I’m just an ordinary guy.
But with them?
I’m the guy who makes the world 0.0007% brighter (and I am, Jaat-Man snaps fingers).
Also, feel free to reach out to me for the playlist :P
Have a cheerful day, gang!
Discover more stories on Her Campus at MUJ. More articles by me coming soon at Vaibhav Chaudhary at HCMUJ; he who watches the world and its miracles closely, noticing what slips between moments, between the infinite realities.