The roast that got the biggest laugh might be the one they’re still carrying years later.

A joke can land two ways at once, and a room only ever reports one of them. The laugh is immediate and public, while whatever it cost the person happens quietly and surfaces later, sometimes for years. Having made one land does not make you a bad person, since almost everybody has and almost nobody finds out.

Watch faces rather than volume for a week. A laugh that arrives half a second late, or somebody going very casual afterward, is usually the tell. A plain sorry about the specific thing lands better than pretending nothing registered.