This is comedy gold. I would have laughed. The teacher having no sense of humor I get, but the other students? WTF is wrong with them? Maybe the culture is too different now - at 45 now, I can confidently say that back in my day this would have gotten some solid laughter.
This kind of awkward humor walks a really fine line between funny and just plain old awkward. Stand up comedy is a real deal skill, you couldn't just go up at an open mic and kill, you probably aren't doing it in a classroom of your peers barely paying attention.
It sounds like he did to the point people actually believed he was accidentally fucking it up to the point they couldn’t see past it to the joke. Either that or it’s 4chan so it’s fake
Yeah and I don’t suspect most people on 4chan have any stage work abilities. I’m talented at stage work, and by that I mean in my public speaking class in high school I fell flat on my face for most of a semester but was charming about it by the end and in college was able to relatively quickly pick up the skill and hold onto it for a long time. Without comedic timing it’s going to start bad, and if you can’t call it and say “I’m sorry it’s all gonna be more of this, it was funnier in my head” you just become the embodiment of cringe.
I hope anon does some open mics. They’re good not just for building skills but also for the soul. Sometimes the soul needs to bomb in a safe space.
Including the professor. Hell, by my sophomore year I wouldn't have been paying attention to another presentation regardless of the time of day. Either it mattered and I was worried about my own, or it didn't and I was on reddit.
I can't imagine anyone actually going through the trouble of doing this as a project, and I especially can't imagine a college professor requiring a student to meet with a counselor for failing a project.