Those who perform on stage get to write their jokes, practice, fine tune with each new performance. Writing then publishing; you only get one chance. It can be quite humiliating. Luckily for me though, these folks around here seem to love it when I humiliate myself so I just do it without fear.
I dabble in many forms, most of which are misunderstood.
Even tried the approach where you write a really long build up, to the point where people don't even realize they're reading a joke, then I hit them with he punchline/absurdity, and carry on like nothing unusual happened. A long time ago someone showed up, didn't read the entire thing, didn't realize it was a joke, then even insisted they knew what the post was about when I asked if they actually read it... lol. That's fun though.
Totally! Yes, there are some humor writers on Medium that do a great job of blurring that line between comedy and realism, and from reading the comments you can tell that many people didn't get it was supposed to be humorous. I've even fallen for it a couple of times.