No, it’s not a joke. Said club uses facial recognition software to detect when you’re having a good time. Then you pay for it. This one sounds like a joke in itself —and we half suspect it is— but here goes. According to reports from the BBC, among other sources, a comedy club in Barcelona has switched over to a new, somewhat ingenious scheme for charging patrons for the funnies.

Literally, they’re doing just that. Facial recognition software built into tablet computers attached to the back of each chair at Barcelona’s Teatreneu club notes when a person has been laughing during the show.

Each laugh costs a total of 0.3 euros (roughly 38 cents), and patrons can be billed up to 24 euros in total (around $30) for their evening.

While it sounds like the death of a comedy club, if a person manages to convince 20 or so of his or her stone-faced friends to come out for the evening, the experiment is actually doing fairly well.

According to a BBC report, ticket prices are actually up six euros since the entire setup was installed.

Other comedy clubs around Spain seem to have noticed as well, for they’re also looking to install pay-per-laugh systems of their very own.

Sounds awesome, right? Well, The Verge’s Ross Miller says that this arrangement is "the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in a comedy club, and let me be clear, comedy clubs aren’t pretty places."