You meant to pay 80, but you only handed over 75.
Then the person next to you says, “Tokisoba.”
If you know the story, your head instantly plays the whole scene, right down to “What time is it?” If you do not know it, it is just a mistake with the bill.
Now call this “being cultured makes life richer,” and things get messy fast.
“So people who know classic rakugo are better than people who don’t?” “Isn’t rakugo just one hobby?” “How is that different from fans laughing at a manga joke?”
That last question gets right to the point.
Yes. Built the same way, they are about the same thing.
You see someone with oddly many arms and say, “Machamp?” You see a weird pose and say, “JoJo pose.” You see a blue flower and say, “If that is the blue spider lily, Muzan is coming to work.” Two people who know rakugo see a payment mix-up and say, “Tokisoba.”
It is not about high culture or low culture.
The moment something in front of you links up with the same reference stored in both your heads, “Wait, you know that too?” happens.
Research in psychology, linguistics, and sociology explains this quite neatly when you put it together.
1. “Culture” is too big a word for this
“Culture” is handy, but it covers too much.
History, literature, science, art, and how society works can all count. Some people even include the ability to see things from many angles.
The fun here does not need anything that big.
It needs something much smaller:
“I know it.” “You know it.” “And you know that I know it.”
That overlap is all it takes.
Researchers who study conversation call information that both people know about, and know the other knows about, common ground.
A 2024 systematic review also describes common ground as information that conversation partners know in common. Using it lets people shorten explanations and talk more efficiently.
So the point is not that people who know more are better.
The point is that when two people share a reference, one short phrase can call up a lot of meaning.
A shared reference is like a keyboard shortcut for culture.
2. Tokisoba and Machamp do the same job in your head
In the classic rakugo story Tokisoba, a man owes 16 mon for a bowl of noodles. He counts the coins one by one, and when he reaches eight, he asks the vendor for the time. The vendor says “nine,” so the man counts that nine as his own and goes on with ten. That way he pays one coin less.
So when someone says “Tokisoba” after a small shortfall in real life, a person who knows the story gets the whole tale, like a compressed file opening up.
The same thing happens with Pokémon and manga.
Strangely many arms. “Machamp.”
A very particular way of standing. “That is a JoJo pose.”
A blue flower. “If that is the blue spider lily, Muzan is coming.”
One word brings up the character, the story, scenes you remember, and the mood of the whole work.
The knowledge itself is not the joke.
The joke comes when something real matches a pattern in your memory, and you both notice the match at the same time.
Give a human brain more references, and it starts adding bonus content to everyday life on its own.
3. Common ground lets you skip the explaining
When we talk, we change how we say things to fit what the other person knows.
Researchers call this audience design.
Studies show that speakers use what they share with the other person. The longer they talk with the same person, the shorter their explanations get, and they settle on one particular name for a thing.
At first you have to say:
“That Pokémon with four arms, big muscles, and a fighting style.”
If the other person knows Pokémon, you just say:
“Machamp.”
If the two of you already joked that someone looks like Machamp, you can say:
“Oh, Machamp is here today.”
A shared reference does not carry less meaning.
It only cuts the number of words you send, and the listener rebuilds the rest from memory.
That is why it feels so good: a lot is packed into a little.
But it only works if the other person has the same dictionary.
If you suddenly throw “Tokisoba,” “blue spider lily,” or “JoJo pose” at someone who knows none of them, you are watching a sharp HD movie while they see an error page.
4. The fun is not “I know it.” It is “We got it together!”
Research on shared reality shows that people want more than to act the same way. They want to feel that another person feels and understands something the way they do. That feeling matters socially in itself.
The thrill of an inside joke is very close to that.
It is not “I know Tokisoba. I’m great.”
It is this:
“Tokisoba.” “What time is it now…? No, I didn’t do it on purpose!”
In that half second, you both think:
“Oh, this person gets it.” “And they even know the next line.”
It is not owning knowledge. It is syncing up.
It is like the moment a song’s intro starts at a concert and the whole crowd reacts.
It is not only that your information matched. You each knew that it matched.
That is why we laugh.
5. Inside jokes build a group, and they build an outside too
This part is not all nice.
In 2005, Fine and de Soucey argued that over time a group builds its own joking culture, a set of references that only its members get.
These jokes make talk flow smoothly and confirm that people are close.
But they also draw a line between inside and outside.
If two out of three people know the same series and keep laughing about it, the third person will naturally find it hard to join in.
So shared jokes have two faces:
“We can get close fast without explaining.” and “Because nothing is explained, people who don’t know can’t get in.”
This does not mean shared jokes are bad.
A kitchen knife is useful because it cuts well, and it is also dangerous if you wave it around carelessly. It is about that level.
6. Studying the source because you feel left out is pretty normal
On the internet, jokes you do not understand come at you all the time.
Say you are watching a video, and everyone in the comments is laughing, “JoJo reference lol.” You are the only one who does not get it.
Then you may think:
“What is this?” “Where does it come from?” “Should I read it?” “I want to get it next time.”
This may be about more than simple curiosity.
A study on FOMO (fear of missing out) was published online in 2024 and in the 2025 issue of the journal. It ran 7 experiments with 5,441 people in total. It found that when people missed a shared experience of a group they value, worry about their future relationships and belonging made FOMO stronger.
Of course, it did not directly test a case like “I didn’t get the meme, so I studied the manga.”
Still, the direction fits well. What drives people is not only “I missed something interesting.” It is also “everyone shares this, and I’m the only one who can’t join.”
Learning the source can sometimes be like getting a passport to a culture.
7. Why it can look like showing off: subcultural capital
So why does “it’s fun when you know it” sometimes turn into “you’re looking down on people who don’t know it”?
The idea of subcultural capital helps here.
In some communities,
“what you know,” “which version is older,” “which way of using it is correct,” and “whether you’re a latecomer”
can become a person’s standing inside the group.
In their study of internet memes, Nissenbaum and Shifman showed that memes work as cultural capital for web communities, that knowledge of the subculture draws lines between people, and that people fight over the “right way” to use a meme.
By then, the question
“Do you know this one?” has turned into “You don’t know this?”
A shared reference has stopped being play and become a test.
The problem is not rakugo versus manga.
It starts the moment “I know it” gets turned into “I’m above you.”
So being happy about a classic rakugo story and being happy about Pokémon work the same way. Adding a ranking on top is a separate matter.
8. Even if you know the source, “JoJo again?” still happens
Here is one more important point.
It is too simple to explain everyone who dislikes inside jokes with
“they’re jealous because they don’t know it” or “they’re just afraid of being left out.”
Even people who know the source perfectly well can think:
“Another menacing sound effect?” “The same pose again?” “You think everything can just be given a JoJo face, don’t you?”
That is because a meme needs newness, not just sharing.
Nissenbaum and Shifman also argue that memes sit in a shaky balance between following the existing rules and bringing something new, and that fights about “correct use” and about memes going stale are common.
So these two kinds of discomfort are different:
feeling left behind because you don’t know it, and feeling tired because you know it and it has been overused.
Even “I don’t like shared jokes” can have several different causes.
9. In face-to-face talk, check the other person’s “dictionary” first
This may be the most useful part in practice.
Face to face, when a joke does not land, it often does not end at “they didn’t know the source.”
It can come back as a judgment of you: “that person says weird things out of nowhere.”
So it makes sense to choose references based on what the other person knows.
You know they like Demon Slayer. → See a blue flower and make the Muzan joke.
You know they like Pokémon. → Compare someone’s silhouette to Machamp.
They probably know it. → Say the title first, like “In Demon Slayer terms…”
They probably don’t know it. → Just explain it normally.
This is not about sucking up to people.
It is audience design.
You are just matching the same signal format.
Being funny is not only about knowing lots of jokes.
It also means guessing, “This person can unpack this joke.”
10. In writing you can play freely, and the writer becomes the reference
Articles and blogs are a bit freer than face-to-face talk.
If one joke does not make sense, the reader can skip a line.
They do not have to take in every explanation.
So writers can easily mix in manga, rakugo, games, internet memes, and their own jokes and comebacks.
And something interesting happens when you keep writing.
At first it is
“I know JoJo, so I get this joke.”
Then it becomes
“This writer is going to play both parts again, make the joke and answer it themselves.”
Common ground now forms between the readers and the writer, about the writer themselves.
Someone who borrowed jokes from other works slowly turns into a shared joke on their own.
This is a strength of written media.
But if you assume every new reader is a longtime fan, there is no way in.
It works well to keep both: highly packed jokes for regulars, and plain, unpacked explanations that let first-timers follow the main text.
Conclusion: Knowledge does not raise your worth. It gives you more things to connect to.
Knowing Tokisoba does not make you great.
Knowing JoJo does not make you great.
Pokémon and Demon Slayer are the same.
As you know more, you have more references that can connect to what happens around you.
And when you share those references with someone, this happens:
“Oh, that’s just like that thing.” “I get it lol.”
In that moment, a simple bill mistake turns into classic rakugo. A simple pose turns into a manga. A simple flower turns into a boss-summoning device.
It is less that life gets richer, and more that the world picks up extra notes on its own.
And when the person next to you can see the same notes, it feels a little good.
Maybe that is all the fun of shared jokes is, and that is exactly why it is so strong.
It is not “I know this.”
It is “Wait, you know that too?”
References (7)
- Fine, G. A., & de Soucey, M. (2005). Joking cultures: Humor themes as social regulation in group life. HUMOR, 18(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2005.18.1.1
- Bovet, V., Knutsen, D., & Fossard, M. (2024). Direct and indirect linguistic measures of common ground in dialogue studies involving a matching task: A systematic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31, 122–136. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02359-2
- Ferreira, V. S. (2019). A Mechanistic Framework for Explaining Audience Design in Language Production. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 29–51. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011653
- Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T., & Levine, J. M. (2009). Shared Reality: Experiencing Commonality With Others' Inner States About the World. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(5), 496–521. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01161.x
- Nissenbaum, A., & Shifman, L. (2017). Internet memes as contested cultural capital: The case of 4chan's /b/ board. New Media & Society, 19(4), 483–501. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815609313
- Rifkin, J. R., Chan, C., & Kahn, B. E. (2025). Anxiety about the social consequences of missed group experiences intensifies fear of missing out (FOMO). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 128(2), 300–313. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000418
- Japan Arts Council, Cultural Digital Library. Everyday life in rakugo: traditional time and money counting in Tokisoba. https://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/dglib/contents/learn/edc20/geino/rakugo/kurashi3.html
