You guys heard about all these jokes on Twitter? They’re actually pretty funny.

Haha.

Jokes aside, it’s hard to put the jokes aside on Twitter. If you’ve spent any time on site, your feed is probably full of memes, witty one liners and whatever wisecracks people can entertain their followers within 140 characters.

But for the professional comedians of Twitter, being funny on social media isn’t just a great way to rack up those faves and RTs, it’s a job. And just like on stage, comedy on Twitter comes in all shapes and sizes.

Silicon Valley star and stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani’s Twitter is full of fully formed observational jokes about life:

In high school I memorized the full periodic table to impress a girl. Didn’t work. I still remember it. This tells you everything about me.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) November 1, 2016

And politics:

“This is rigged!” he screamed at the top of his lungs as the bright orange bowling ball rolled into the gutter.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) October 15, 2016

Nanjiani’s tweets are similar to traditional stand-up in format: find something funny, write a joke about it and let it fly. And as a quick glance at his account will show, his tweets are consistently entertaining, fun observations about the internet’s topics of the day.

But for a generation of younger, social-media-born-and-raised comedians, Twitter is more than just a platform for comedic content, it’s an exercise in the joke-writing experience itself.

Millennial favorite Brandon Wardell, a talented stand-up comedian better known for his day job as an internet rabble rouser, might be the prime example of this style. If you wade through his thousands of tweets, some brilliant, some just the words “succ” and “thicc” thrown into random sentences, you’ll begin to see the way he puts jokes together for the world to see.

Take, for example, this series of tweets that began as a shout-out to Chicken Biscuits and ended as a satirical in-joke about internet activism.

im talking 2 the CEO of underrated snacks pic.twitter.com/aI2M34Zc8W
— BRANDON WARDELL (@BRANDONWARDELL) September 29, 2016

bone apple tea pic.twitter.com/YhWo3xI9B7
— BRANDON WARDELL (@BRANDONWARDELL) September 29, 2016

im gonna return this bc it’s tru gd mf intersectional hours. some of my best friends are trans n fats n this is offensive pic.twitter.com/LtpqpLtJeS
— BRANDON WARDELL (@BRANDONWARDELL) September 29, 2016

it’s 2016. it’s tru gd mf intersectional hours n this isn’t cool anymore @nabisco pic.twitter.com/GHlFEdy5ud
— BRANDON WARDELL (@BRANDONWARDELL) September 29, 2016

It’s one of those half dumb, half funny jokes that work great on Twitter because 30 seconds after you read them, there’s no need to remember them. But in the moment, they’re amusing.

This sort of shortsightedness gives Wardell and his Twitter-famous class of up-and-coming comics the freedom to experiment with comedic form. Almost none of the 140-character joke drafts will ever make it on stage, but that’s the point. The site allows for trial and error that the format of stand-up has all but ruled out.

I mean if you can, why not tweet about Halloween in general, and then matching costumes, and then imagine a specific scene where two people dressed as a character from an incredibly recent TV show have an awkward interaction, like comedian and actor Zack Pearlman did last week?

*not wearing a costume and someone walks up*Someone: are you ken bone?
I hate Halloween
— Zack Pearlman (@ZackPearlman) October 30, 2016

The best thing about Halloween is watching two people who are dressed the same try and interact at a party.
— Zack Pearlman (@ZackPearlman) October 30, 2016

Eleven #1: nice costume!Eleven #2: best costume right? Gotta have eggos haha*they both spend the rest of the night in their head*
— Zack Pearlman (@ZackPearlman) October 30, 2016

Not every joke on Twitter is going to make you die laughing, which is good because a lot of my friends are on the site and I’d miss them. But it is a fascinating, enjoyable look into the scattered, irreverent minds of the internet’s funniest people and the ways they share those thoughts with the world.