When I finally dragged myself out of bed this morning and had a cup of coffee, I turned on the computer to see that I had some mentions. One of the usuals that feel the need to tag all judges in the contest and @sparrowbernard, a semi-regular entrant that doesn't always tag me.

I looked at his post and at first felt a bit angry at the accusatory tone, but then I had another sip of my coffee and thought back to when I first started posting in Comedy Open Mic.

Someone who followed me saw one of my posts and told @idikuci about it. He then stopped by and invited me to join the contest, told me about the prizes and explained to me the couple of rules I would have to follow. He made it easy for me because I was never one for writing with rules in mind.

I should also mention that I had just been curied on a different post and was thinking pretty highly of myself.

So I added a couple of nominations and the tag. I then adjusted the title and went to the round kickoff post and posted the link there. (Up until then I had only entered contests that you did everything in the comments.)

I then read all of the other posts that were in the comments. I had this one locked in!

When the winners' post was out, I went to see my name under the jester title.

It wasn't there!

The one that was there was not something that I found funny, so I said to my wife, "Fuck these guys. I should have won that. My post was way funnier and written better than the one who won. I'm not entering this contest again." I scrolled down to find my name next to a 2 SBD prize. Seeing as almost all of my post brought in less than $0.30, I decided that it was worth following a couple of rules.

Then I wrote another really funny post. I thought that I would try again and solidify my belief that these people just vote for their friends.

It was the same fucking thing, except I only got 1 SBD this time.

I had just joined the Discord server and was snooping around to see how buddy-buddy everyone was when someone mentioned that they needed a guest judge to fill in.

This was my chance!

I'm thinking it was round 11 or something, but we had to read all of the entries (around 130 I think and sort them out into the top 20 and put them in order of what we found funniest. It was pretty hard to do, but I was happy to do it because it was now going to prove that these people were being shady.

They weren't. In a way, I was disappointed because I had to admit that some people didn't find me funny, but in another way, I had found a great bunch of people that really just cared about bringing the funny out in people. How can you stay angry about that?

I told my wife that I was just not as amazing as we both thought I was but I was going to judge again if they wanted me to. I wasn't going to win anything, but I got a few dollars worth of upvotes on my posts and comments and that was as much as I had won in the contest. I also figured that it would add diversity to the judges and give more people that enjoy the same humour as me a chance to win something.

In the end, I had to swallow my pride and understand that I wasn't as funny as my drunk friends thought I was. Everyone likes their own sense of humour and gravitates towards that style. That's why we think we are funny.

I hope that this first part tells you something about my background and lets you know that I can relate to your post before I respond to the post in which you tagged me.

First of all, is this an entry into the contest? If it is, then you will need to nominate a couple of people and maybe throw some jokes in it.

Secondly, getting to know the judges personally will not get you very far if you are looking to get a higher score. I know this because we have to judge each other's entries and I have never won more than 2 SBD when I wasn't judging. There are several entries from friends/judges that I have given very low scores to because I didn't find them funny.

Now I will go and read the posts that you linked to, even though they are not being judged right now. I will give you my honest opinion on them. This is in no way meant to seem mean or belittling. I went to @amirtheawesome1 for advice on my writing and he told me that it took to long to get to the point. I shaved a hundred words or so and got a @curie.

Everyone can use help with their writing and the more eyes the merrier.

Okay, so here's post #1 that you want looked at.

Over all, it's hard for me to read. I am guessing that English is not your first language, but I could be wrong. The spelling and grammar are off and it detracts from the humour when I have to keep trying to figure out syntax and punctuation. The story would probably do better in an English speaking contest if you got help with editing and proofreading before you posted it. We offer help with posts in our discord server.

Some other points:

• The story doesn't make sense to me. I assume it's based on something that has happened to you, but I don't know what. If it's trying to point out that you don't like COM's rules, like posts needing to be in English and some of the others, then it's just not something I find funny.
• Explaining the "touching story" is kind of fun, but maybe you should have put more touching throughout the story. A couple of times near the end doesn't drive the funny home for me.
• The urination comment didn't make any sense to me. I would probably say something like "kissed it deeply on the mouth, or tongued its asshole" but that would just be for shock value and because I'm a deviant.
• The whole story comes across as angry or condescending to me. It's as if you are saying that something isn't right because you aren't benefitting from it. That may not be the tone you were taking but that's the way it sounded to me.

Keep in mind that this is just my opinion. Other folks can maybe give their critique as well.

Now for post #2.

• The English problem is still here, but more manageable because the mini posts are shorter.
• The FIFA joke was really funny, even though it was published a couple of days earlier. You added to it, which is fine, as it helped me understand it better, but the fact still remains that the original joke was someone else's.
• The mortuary joke was good. I have heard it told differently, but this was a good spin on it. I don't know the people in question, but it would probably be even funnier if I did.

Again, keep in mind that this is just my opinion. It doesn't reflect on anyone else but me. I didn't judge these entries in the contest, but if I had, the first one would have got 1/5 and the second would have been 2.5/5.

I looked up your scores for the round:
A touching story - 2.3/5 Rank 53/131
Breaking News - Score 1.3/5 Rank 87/131
It looks like the judges liked them about the same, but in the opposite order.

As for Dave's post, it received a score of 3.3/5, Rank 24/131 and Asher's got 2.6/5 Rank 46/131 and it won nothing.

Lynn's post was her first entry in COM and it won people's champion, which has nothing to do with judges. It is solely judged on post earnings. It's also kind of unfair to put her on the spot by asking her to compare her well written, funny post to yours. She just entered a contest that she was nominated for and did really well.

I really think that you would benefit from some help with writing in English. I imagine that there are online courses available for free to help with grammar and all that. Mostly your spelling is pretty good, it's just hard to read for me. Grammarly is a free app that I use and it is really good. It catches a lot for me, and I had always thought of myself as quite literate. I use too many commas in some places and not enough in others.

You can also go to the Comedy-911 channel in our discord server and ask someone to go over your post and let you know what might help.

I hope that this doesn't deter you from further entries, as we truly would like to help you with getting your comedy career moving along. I just wanted to let you know that you aren't the only one that feels this way and there are a lot of options as you push forward.

Anyhow, I hope this helped. Feel free to comment or hit me up in Discord if you want to discuss it further. You can also sign up to be a guest judge and see how things work, but be reminded that you will need enough time to read, upvote and comment on up to 15 posts a day and then score and comment each of the posts.