You can tell who someone’s been around by the way their jokes change. Influence has a scent.

Company shows up first in the small unconscious things, in phrasing, in what strikes you as funny, in what you now find worth mocking. These shifts arrive before any change of opinion and without any decision, which is what makes them a reliable signal. Humor is where a group’s values travel fastest.

Listen to your own jokes for a week and ask where each one came from. If you are laughing at things you would not defend out loud, that is worth knowing. You can enjoy people without adopting everything they find funny, though it takes noticing.