"Why Doesn't He Just Ride the Robot Vacuum?": Humor in Everyday Interactions with Smart Homes

Smart homes often fail to align with household routines and expectations. Devices respond late, misrecognize requests, require workarounds, and are frequently repurposed. While the HCI community has examined breakdown, repair, and appropriation, we know less about how such misalignments are made livable and even vibrant in everyday domestic life. This study takes humor as an analytic lens to examine when and how misalignment becomes meaningful. Drawing on an online ethnography of humorous smart home interactions on Douyin (Chinese TikTok), we identify four humor practices: interactional anthropomorphism through teasing, parody dialogue, and self-mockery; multi-device coordination trouble as a socially animated domestic atmosphere; repurposing devices for relationship work; and transforming breakdown into shared family micro-interactions. We argue that humor is not merely a byproduct of misalignment, but an everyday sensemaking practice that refigures the user, the agent, and the home.