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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41827
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Dark humor is pretty simply... its offensive and funny. Now expressing a Dark joke can be hard and fly over most peoples head, especially when you write it on paper where tone and pacing aren't present and you have no way to imply actions without disturbing the joke. So instead of having some fun, you just leave a bunch of people confused or offended which isn't exactly good for your reputation.

For example, when I read "She used to be a soldier until she took a bullet to the knee" I don't see a joke. Being a soldier or getting discharged isn't offensive or funny. Taking a bullet to the knee is at best a parady of skyrims arrow to the knee, which was neither funny or offensive. Simply a meme all over the internet. So your joke has flow over my head, failed to offend me, and failed to be a joke to me.

Now if I change that to, "She used to be a soldier until she got on her knees" its a bit darker in my opinion. (Take a pause here and see if you can spot the joke) For me, the implication of "got on her knees" implies a sexual act, but not everyone will see this, in which case your joke has failed. Its a bit better than "bullet to the knee" which I think people will interpret literally. Finally, to try and seal the joke, you add in some extra dialogue from a nearby character "And a load on her face". And to really nail it home, have someone making blowjob actions nearby.

There is no way for you to tell if black humor is going to work or judge if your humor is dark enough. Why? it depends on your target audience. What do they find offensive and far do they read into it? A skyrim joke is meaningless to me. A rape joke could be too offensive and an anti-vax joke could be just the write amount of offensive to funny to work.

Original score: 1