[HN Gopher] Old jokes ___________________________________________________________________ Old jokes Author : Gadiguibou Score : 233 points Date : 2022-08-04 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (dynomight.net) (TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net) | JasonFruit wrote: | Maybe my standards are low, but the ones categorized as _Total | failure_ strike me as kind of okay. Not great humor, but tbh | better than half my son 's jokes. | cwillu wrote: | That's funny, your mom told me the same thing! | Peritract wrote: | The translation does them no favours, but you could definitely | tell all the total failures and get a laugh. | | I'm not entirely sure the author understood them. | bombcar wrote: | Considering a lot of jokes depend on a pun or play on words - | I was surprised that I could figure out almost all of them. | dionidium wrote: | > _Another person who was going away wrote to a pedant that he | should buy him some books. But he regarded the request lightly | and said to him on his return, "I did not receive your letter | which you sent concerning the books."_ | | I'm fairly certain the joke here is something like, "you | couldn't have known to say you didn't receive the letter unless | you actually did get the letter." I'm guessing the translation | isn't helping, but it's actually a pretty routine joke. Not a | total failure at all! | samatman wrote: | Hi Jan, | | Sorry I didn't get back to you with those spreadsheet edits, | I must not have gotten your email! | | Best, -Joe -- Sent from my iPhone | RajT88 wrote: | Rather than, "That's what she said", I prefer to sneak in "Why | thank you!". | | I believe the first place I heard the "Why Thank You" bit was in | Police Squad / Naked Gun. The signature "confused guy says | something unintentionally funny" humor Leslie Neilsen was known | for. | [deleted] | silisili wrote: | Oh man, Leslie Nielsen movies, specifically the Naked Gun | series, are my favorite of all time. They are nothing but | clever double entendres the whole time. Each time I watch them, | I find something new it seems. | RajT88 wrote: | Extremely humor dense. And multiple levels of it as well! | | You can enjoy his movies as dumb and silly movies, or you can | also enjoy the more clever jokes as well. I definitely did | not totally understand everything when I first saw them as a | kid. | vorpalhex wrote: | I got the referenced epub and it's quite humorous, despite some | translation difficulty. | | The very dark jokes are actually quite funny. | nikanj wrote: | My theory for the "why people enjoy this" is: for part A of the | population, the situation activates the empathy centers of the | brain, and you share the pain. For part B, the bullying centers | activate, and you find amusement in the torment of the poor fool. | | We all have both centers, only luck will tell which one is wired | up to "cringe" stimuli. | georgeecollins wrote: | My theory is that Shakespeare is full of old jokes and old | metaphors, for which we don't have an earlier written version. He | is this one person that is so often quoted and repeated that it | seems unbelievable that he could come up with so many memorable | lines. It may be that he was the person who made the works of art | that preserved the cliches of his era. | TillE wrote: | It's a good bet that a new phrase which would require | explanation is not something you're likely to put in a play. | But most of the stuff that Shakespeare scholars credit to him | probably _did_ originate with him. | | The printing press was well established in Europe by his time | (to preserve any prior art), and Shakespeare had an astounding | gift for language. | a_e_k wrote: | I was amused to see a performance of All's Well that Ends Well | and discover that the "cutting onions" joke goes at least as | far back as Shakespeare. | | At the very end during the big resolution scene, Lafeu declares | "Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon." | [deleted] | nigerian1981 wrote: | I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White | and the Seven Dwarves | mech422 wrote: | Stolen! Currently torturing my friends and co-workers with it | :-D | nigerian1981 wrote: | Why thank you! | GnarfGnarf wrote: | I am haunted by the question of whether our ancestors (who were | every bit as smart as us) were naive when it came to humor, or | have we lost something? | | Were Caesar and Henry IV's jesters as hip as Richard Pryor and | Lenny Bruce? Did Dave Chapelle-level humor exist in earlier | centuries? Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy etc. were clearly the | pinnacle of humor in their day, yet I find their acts trite and | boring. Only "Who's on first?" still works. | | Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were hip in the 50's. Today they are | _passe_. Is our humor evolving? Are we developing an | irreversible, ratcheting level of sophistication? Or was there | some ineffable zeitgeist, a quality to the context that we can | never recreate? | renewiltord wrote: | This Elitch business appears to be wholesale fabrication. | Hilarious. Added here | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Said_the_actress_... | but I don't get the joke. | | Tom K Elitch, Tomkelitch, Tom Kelitch, Thomas Elitch. Is it just | that "Tom Elitch" owns a business on "Broadway" | https://clustrmaps.com/a/307mgf/ | | There's got to be something clever about it unless it's just | total nonsense for its own sake. Ineptias ineptias gratia? :D | | Touche! | com2kid wrote: | > A pedant was looking for his book for many days but could not | find it. By chance as he was eating lettuce and turned a certain | corner he saw the book lying there. Later meeting a friend who | was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said, "Do not worry but | buy some lettuces and eat them at the corner, when you turn it | and go a little ways you fill find it." | | Not a a half bad joke making fun of people who are bad at logic | and who doesn't understand cause and effect. Quite a few variants | of this joke still exist today. It isn't meant to be funny, so | much as it is an example of faulty logic taken to an absurd | length. | | But this type of pattern matching is something people do all the | time, and the results of it are often become baked into cultural | traditions. From not having fans on in bedrooms to eating | <culturally preferred food> when sick to get better faster. | Someone witnessed A, then B, then C happen in rapid succession, | so they assume A, B, and C are related to each other. | toast0 wrote: | > eating <culturally preferred food> when sick to get better | faster. | | Some of these are more than just tradition. I'm familiar with | having different kinds of soups or maybe eating spicy things. | Having soup increases your liquid intake which generally helps | your body process stuff (you could of course just drink lots of | water, but that's not very culturally significant), spicy | things can increase sinus drainage which is helpful too. | mbg721 wrote: | My favorite broken-logic joke about this is that a (pick your | favorite ethnicity) grandmother owned two chickens, but one | day, one of them got sick. So she killed the healthy chicken | and made soup to nurse the other one back to health. | gnicholas wrote: | Like Lisa Simpson's tiger-repelling rock: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw | johnfn wrote: | > A pedant was looking for his book for many days but could not | find it. By chance as he was eating lettuce and turned a certain | corner he saw the book lying there. Later meeting a friend who | was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said, "Do not worry but | buy some lettuces and eat them at the corner, when you turn it | and go a little ways you fill find it." | | This is interesting: it's the sort of quip that, if said | extemporaneously in conversation, would probably get someone to | laugh. The funny thing would specifically be referencing back to | a conversation/event that happened a few days ago. The thing that | makes it less funny in the compressed form is that you don't have | to put the 2 and 2 together of "oh yeah, that's an event that | happened a few days ago which is related to this situation" | because the compressed joke has spoon-fed you the context. | | Maybe jokes were such a novel form at the time that even the | compressed form was still funny back then? | TremendousJudge wrote: | Also, there's something about translated jokes. Not just in the | sense of language, but also in the sense of culture. If | somebody right now tried to translate a modern English joke to | Thai, but only knew about the language through reading the | works of Shakespeare, a King James bible and the US legal code, | it doesn't seem that the result would be very funny to somebody | from Thailand. | dieselgate wrote: | The funniest part of that for me was the "friend lamenting the | loss of his girdle" | prometheus76 wrote: | A girdle in that time would now be called a belt. | dieselgate wrote: | Indeed, didn't know that. The last time I used a girdle was | for holding hip padding in high school football. | cecilpl2 wrote: | One of my favorite Norm MacDonald jokes: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oseqh7SMIvo | thesuitonym wrote: | The shaggy dog story is a time honoured form of anti-humour. | nigerian1981 wrote: | Currently searching for dog houses on Amazon | davidw wrote: | That was worse than getting rick-rolled. | Jalad wrote: | Not quite as old as some of the jokes in the article but I really | like this one from a previous thread: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13587528 | | For context, the joke is set in the Soviet Union | | > Russian engineer got fed up of having all responsibility and | low salary, so he moves to another city and pretends to be an | ordinary worker, same salary and peace of mind. However, not long | after communist party sends him to evening classes. On his first | day there at maths class he was asked about circle circumference | formula, but for some reason he could not remember it off hand, | so he goes on blackboard and tries to work it out with linear | integral. After exhausting whole blackboard he finally gets the | result: | | > -2RPi | | > Then all of the sudden he hears all of the class whispering to | him: "Change the direction of integration!" | thesuitonym wrote: | The Soviet economy really was more efficient than ours--their | shelves were empty decades ago! | bombcar wrote: | Monstrous Regiment by pratchett is basically this joke in novel | form. | racl101 wrote: | First time I heard: _that 's what she said_ as a punchline for | double-entendres... | | was around mid-to-late 90s on _King of the Hill_ and I was a | teenager. It was an episode where Ben Stiller guest starred as a | new employee who worked with Hank Hill at _Strickland Propane_ | and the premise was that this new employee (I forget his name) | would create a toxic work environment where he 'd make crude | jokes about everything and everyone and nobody had the balls to | stand up to him except for Hank. | | Now, given that writer/producer Greg Daniels, worked in both | _King of the Hill_ and _The Office_ I figured that maybe he made | the joke prominent in the latter show. | | But I'm probably wrong. | bitcurious wrote: | "This inn on the road to Iwanoue is a cold place to sleep... | | Oh monk, would you please lend me your robes? | | The monk's reply: | | Those who have given up the world wear only a single layer of | moss-rough cloth, | | yet not to offer it would be heartless. | | Let us sleep together, then." | | A poem/joke by Ono no Komachi from c. 825 -- c. 900 | circa wrote: | I didn't see a mention of Chris Farley. He says it in 2 of his | movies from the 90s I believe. | t-3 wrote: | I wonder how many of the unintelligible jokes are puns and | wordplay? That's one of the most favored categories of jokes, and | hardest to translate. | Digit-Al wrote: | I wonder why they had such a thing for pedants. | Kaibeezy wrote: | Iffy translation of "smarty pants" or "Mr know it all"? | davidw wrote: | "Well hello Mr Fancy Pants" | derbOac wrote: | I kind of wondered how much connotation, puns, etc. been lost | to us over time. Things like that matter. A lot of these | jokes would have a bit more color if "pedant" was seen more | as "Mr. know it all". | singlow wrote: | Seems the word being translated is Skholastikos. | | At its root its a person who doesn't work. A scholar didn't | work and could devote their time to acquiring knowledge. But a | lazy person could also be a scholastikos. | | So I think here it is getting the double treatment, referring | to a person who has lots of book smarts but no common sense. | | Pedant kind of makes sense as a person who thinks themselves | smart, so perfect for being the butt of a joke about being | stupid. Pedant, afterall, was once just a word for teacher in | English, but has taken on a negative connotation. | camjohnson26 wrote: | Is that where "pedantic" comes from? | bee_rider wrote: | Pedantic describes the attribute of being a pedant. It is | like "employee" and "employed." Hopefully this isn't too | pedantic, haha, but they almost seem too closely related to | describe one as coming from the other. | singlow wrote: | You are asking whether pedantic is derived from pedant? I | assume so. It can both mean like a pedant (emphasizing | minutiae) or it can mean just dull, as we often think of | classroom activities being dull, which is similar to | didactic, although pedantic is probably only used in the | negative sense where as didactic still has more | neutral/positive usage in addition to meaning dull. So I am | not sure if Pedantic ever meant generally to be related to | teaching by design or intent. | homonculus1 wrote: | The answer is "yes" | saxonww wrote: | I was wondering the same. Was 'pedant' at the time more like | what we'd call 'peasant' today? | renewiltord wrote: | Etymologically appears to be 'headmaster'. I imagine that | this and the Cumaeans are just a "pick a specific because | it's funny" joke. Partly this makes fun of a certain class | intentionally, but partly just because it's specific. | | For instance, there are also | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardarji_joke | trebbble wrote: | By the time the translation was made (~1920), it could also | be "know-it-all" (I assume this started as a sarcastic use | of its sense of "headmaster") which is pretty close to its | typical meaning today--to me it implies someone who often, | unnecessarily or inappropriately, corrects others, but that | may be a recent connotation, and it's still close. | | We'd have to find the original text and consult a | translation dictionary, I expect, to figure out exactly | which sense was intended. | vlunkr wrote: | > I've noticed a disturbing phenomenon: Many people who only | recently watched the US version of The Office seem to think that | Michael Scott invented That's what she said. | | Citation needed on that. Certainly it's been attached to the | office, but if you've actually watched it you would know that | Micheal Scott never invented a new phrase on purpose. | RC_ITR wrote: | I'm guessing you watched the office (or were at least sentient) | during its original run. | | It's "classic" TV now, and it's always hard for kids to parse | what's new and a allusion in "classic" TV. | kalimoxto wrote: | I think this idea (that the phrase originated with The Office) | entered the zeitgeist because of 30 Rock | https://youtu.be/Z2DGHRMJQLw | thesuitonym wrote: | ``I've noticed'' is the citation. It's a personal anecdote, not | a thesis paper. | vlunkr wrote: | I know, it's just condescending implying that all these | office fans don't get the underlying joke. | [deleted] | anamexis wrote: | The very next sentence says as much. | trebbble wrote: | The author goes on to point out that that's exactly what the | joke there is _supposed_ to be--Scott making a mess of attempts | to deploy a tired joke _is_ the joke. | | A poster in these very comments admitted to having believed | that the joke originated with The Office. I suppose the | author's "citation" is that they've personally witnessed this | enough times to make an educated guess that it's a fairly | widespread belief. | effingwewt wrote: | No one in these comments has said they thought that. The | closest was someone saying 'he may not have invented it, but | he brought it back. | | I think you'd be hard pressed to find even a few instances | out of the millions of viewers who would have thought Michael | Scott invented the phrase. | | I just assumed it was hyperbole. | __david__ wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32346330 | samatman wrote: | It certainly had a fad run as 90s slang, thanks to Wayne's | World, before the Office was even a glimmer. | effingwewt wrote: | Yea, I'm 41 now, so I guess there goes me being old, but | I guess its old enough now that people confuse the | origin. | | Like when artists cover a song and younger folks don't | realize it wasn't the original. | | I'll make a mental note to keep in mind I'm old now so as | not to become the old man on the porch screaming at kids. | trebbble wrote: | Oh shit I forgot about it being in Wayne's World. That's | very likely the first place I heard it. | trebbble wrote: | > Yeah, I appreciated this article -- will confess I | definitely thought the joke originated with The Office. | | - kevin___ | | I'd not be a bit surprised if a double-digit percentage of | viewers thought the joke originated there. | effingwewt wrote: | I don't know how I missed it. | | I guess these days not everyone hears it growing up? | | Seems I need to widen my view. | kevin___ wrote: | Didn't expect my first comment to be so controversial! | | I just asked a few friends if they thought it came from | the show or not. The first person that responded thought | it had come from the show as well. The second knew the | joke hadn't originated from there, but attributed its | popularity to appearing on the show. | trebbble wrote: | > I don't know how I missed it. | | Haha, I was sure I'd read that post, but had to look for | quite a while to find it again, myself, for some reason. | | > I guess these days not everyone hears it growing up? | | I'm actually not sure _I_ heard it until after it was on | The Office and it was suddenly _everywhere_ , constantly. | If I did, it wouldn't have been long before that. "Your | mom" was big (LOL, _yeah_ she was) when I was a kid, | though. | [deleted] | narag wrote: | I wonder if the point of the amphora is that pitch will cover the | decoration or either it will seal the pores. | t-3 wrote: | I think it's about the decoration, and I'm pretty sure the guy | who painted himself in pitch did so in order to pretend he was | wearing the leggings he couldn't fit into. | wahern wrote: | Presumably a stolen amphora would have been very fancy and | possibly conspicuous, so more specifically the joke works | like, a person bought a stolen Picasso to hang in his | gallery, but crudely painted it over so he wouldn't get | caught. | | I totally missed the pants/pitch joke, good catch. Reminds me | of an episode of It's Always Sunny where Frank keeps flushing | articles of clothing down the toilet and uses black paint to | cover up, except it ends up being a pretext for a later, | unrelated bit. | derbOac wrote: | That one has kind of turned in over my head a lot. I didn't | think of the decoration for some reason when I first read it, | but then it made more sense. I also imagine it would be pretty | sticky? | | I think some of these things would land differently to an | audience more intuitively familiar with these things in their | daily lives. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | These remind me of a category of "joke" that some of my middle- | school peers and I engaged in: the non-joke. The only one I can | remember went something like: _a man walks into a bakery and asks | for two baguettes. The baker looks at him, thinks for a moment | and says "It's OK, you can leave your bike outside"_. | | Looking back, I think this idea was somehow rooted in the idea | that jokes have _delivery_ and that if you use that delivery | (rythmn, emphasis, body language) maybe you could say anything | and be funny. There was also the peer effect - if you had an | audience "plant" in the school yard that would start the | laughter, sometimes it would catch even for these non-jokes. | | Decades later, the idea I described above seems both obviously | false, but also true, in the sense that a lot of modern stand up | is based on "say anything the right way and people laugh". | However, "the right way" for standup is very different than the | "telling a joke" structure. | | On the other hand, it does feel to me at this point that this is | the crux of the contemporary poetry slam: read an arbitrary text | in the right way, and while it may not win any prizes, it will | feel like poetry, because _that 's what make it poetry_. | dtech wrote: | This is also because laughing at jokes is a way to | (unconsciously) show that you get it, and/or belong with the | "in-crowd". So people tend to laugh at jokes other's find | funny, even if they wouldn't themselves, and remember the joke | must've been funny because they laughed. Also see: laugh | tracks. | anyfoo wrote: | I know what you mean, but it isn't quite the same I think. | The anecdote I told in a sibling comment about a friend and | me sitting in the back of my mom's car is an example. We were | two very good friends, so there was no "in-crowd" dynamic at | all, and we were absolutely loosing over it, it was genuinely | funny to us. Roughly the same age as what OP stated, so there | just seems to be something inherently funny about those non- | sequiturs to young folks... maybe that's when you start to | "deconstruct" concepts like humor. | edmcnulty101 wrote: | My favorite non-joke. | | What did the farmer say when he walked outside and saw that his | tractor was gone? | | Damn it. My tractor is gone. | xxs wrote: | Unrealistic - insufficient cursing. | thaumasiotes wrote: | I wouldn't expect a lot of cursing in that scenario. I'd | expect a lot of cursing from a farmer experiencing some | sort of understandable problem that happens to him all the | time, but not from one experiencing a mysterious, | unexplained emergency. | smitty1e wrote: | That's a non-sequitur, no? | Max-q wrote: | > Looking back, I think this idea was somehow rooted in the | idea that jokes have delivery and that if you use that delivery | (rythmn, emphasis, body language) maybe you could say anything | and be funny. | | This is "Friends" summed up. We are only laughing because they | tell something like it was funny, and the canned laughter tells | our brain to laugh. | triceratops wrote: | > This is "Friends" summed up... the canned laughter | | Are you not aware that the show was filmed before a live | audience? Watch how the actors pause between lines - they're | actually waiting for the crowd to finish laughing. And that's | the case for most sitcoms from the previous century. | | It might not be your kind of humor. But real audiences found | the show funny enough to laugh so long and hard, when they | were under no obligation to do so, that the actors had to | have unnaturally long pauses between their lines. | | Many modern internet commenters have a misguided tendency to | automatically dismiss any show with a laugh track as | inferior. FWIW I think _Friends_ was a great show for most of | its run, with top-notch comic writing, within the constraints | of the medium at the time. Sitcoms were nearly always single- | camera format, and shot in a studio with a live audience. The | storylines had to be accessible to casual watchers. The shows | lived and died by weekly ratings, and needed to have ad | breaks at specific times, which also influenced the writing, | casting, and pacing. | | Just to show you that I'm not swayed by mere laugh tracks and | longevity, let me also announce that anything made by Chuck | Lorre is absolute drivel. | fastaguy88 wrote: | Anyone can tell a joke: | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m8raDUn0UgQ | guelo wrote: | Delivery is the crux of a lot of comedians. If they have good | delivery they can get away with saying a lot of unfunny, even | mean repulsive things, and have the audience laugh along with | them | function_seven wrote: | My favorite: | | How many pancakes does it take to shingle a roof? | | Orange, because snakes don't _have_ armpits! | twodave wrote: | My Dad used to tell this one, but the punchline was "because | fish can't eat ice cream!" Thanks for taking me back in time | :) | humanistbot wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-humor | | You might enjoy the work of Andy Kaufman. | salmo wrote: | We used to really enjoy a long elaborate joke setup with a let | down as the punchline in college. | | My favorite was "A patron sees a whale sitting in a booth at | the bar". You go on and on about him coming back day after day | seeing the wale, describing the beverage, etc. Just improv it. | The key is going as long as you can while keeping the audience, | but still getting that frustration and tension from them. | | At the end the patron gets up the courage to talk to the whale | explains to the whale that he had seen him for days, was | amazed, etc. Then the whale looked at him and responded [insert | best whale noise impression]. | | Since he passed I've seen a bunch of Norm Macdonald videos of | this. He really was the best. The moth joke and others that go | on for ~30 mins each on Conan are amazing. | | He plays them dumb but is basing them off like Russian | literature tropes that go way over the audience's head. The | repeated build up, let down, and then finally just a silly | punch line that could have landed in 3 sentences is incredible. | And his ability to play off Conan's occasional shots... | gregstoll wrote: | The author just wrote an article about this as well - | https://dynomight.net/no-soap-radio/ | yccs27 wrote: | Some of the variations just had me in tears and I can't | really explain why. | | Edit: I guess it's the same formula as most jokes: There is | some logic in the setup, and the punchline replaces it with a | different logic or pattern. Only in this case, the original | logic isn't common sense, but the expected pattern of each | type of joke. A meta-joke in that regard. It really depends | on you being blindsided, but immediately recognizing the new | "logic" at the punchline. | ranger207 wrote: | Yeah this is a meme in the modern internet sense, where a | large portion of the humor comes from recognizing the | format | brianpan wrote: | A joke breaks expectations. Setup: "What kind of bear has | no teeth?" Punchline: "A gummy bear" breaks the | expectation you have trying to think of a type of animal | bear. | | Non-jokes or meta-jokes break the expectation but in an | unusual way. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" | punchline breaks your expectation of an broken | expectation. You thought it was a joke, but it turned out | to be a statement. The aristocrats joke turns out to be | just a dirty story- the story is the "joke". | | Memes are not non-jokes or meta jokes. Memes are | refillable jokes in a known container. You see the | picture, you know what the joke is. Just like a TV sitcom | is storytelling/joketelling in a refillable container. | You see the kooky friend character, you know how he/she | is going to react. | | The aristocrats joke happens to also be a refillable | container (you can tell/retell it however you want), but | that's not the part that makes it a non-joke. | manimino wrote: | "To get to the other side" has a double meaning (to die, | perhaps by being hit by a car). | | So the chicken joke is not necessarily an anti-joke. | anyfoo wrote: | I remember how intensely funny such non-sequitur jokes were to | us at the same age. And they were quite similar to the one you | quoted, absolute nonsense. | | I vividly remember sitting in the back of my mothers car with a | friend and just losing it for laughter. It was uncontrollable | and my mother was rather annoyed. | | It's almost sad that it doesn't work at all anymore. | joosters wrote: | Kind of related: https://twitter.com/KidsWriteJokes | | It's a collection of jokes (apparently) written by children. | They aren't funny, in the sense that they make no damn sense. | Yet, lots of them are funny in the sense that they are | completely ridiculous but you can see what the child was trying | to do, i.e. deliver a joke in the same style as they have heard | before, e.g. Knock, knock Who's there? | A ladybug. Ladybug who? A LADYBUG. I just SAID | that. | aantix wrote: | "Some people say funny things. | | Other people say things funny." | | Both can be equally comedic. Looks like you and your friends | discovered that. | nyx wrote: | Michael Davis, comedy juggling act: "They say a comic says | funny things, but a _comedian_ says things funny. This makes | me a juggler. " | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKRrfAzdpW8 | wizofaus wrote: | Surely the ultimate non-joke involves querying the purpose of a | chicken's road-crossing adventures... | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | "to die, in the rain" | zxcvbn4038 wrote: | I've never seen a chicken try to cross a road, they always | seem to stay well away. | | Geese on the other hand seem convinced they are tougher than | anything with four wheels. | happimess wrote: | It's a pun. The chicken gets hit by a car and dies. It | reaches The Other Side. | wizofaus wrote: | If there's a pun it's one referencing the line from Othello | about "this foul proceeding", but good luck coming up with | one that would get a laugh outside very select circles. | swores wrote: | Nope, that's a pun you've shared, but it's not _the_ | definitive answer in any way as you seem to think. | | There is no single correct chicken crossing the road joke, | but specifically the person you're talking to is speaking | about an anti-joke where you don't even get to it crossing | the road because you're stuck on the question of why cross | the road rather than the act of crossing it. | anyfoo wrote: | That seems to be the recent interpretation (or at least I | only recently read about it, it seems to be a thing right | now), but I remain unconvinced. | | It's just entirely plausible to me that the pun was just a | "happy accident", and the originator of the joke really did | mean to give a groan-inducing borderline-tautological | answer that does not offer any insight besides the obvious. | You were expecting a punchline, but your expectation was | subverted! | | And at least that's also funnier than that lame pun. I'd be | pretty disappointed to be honest, but we'll probably never | really find out. | stryan wrote: | > Looking back, I think this idea was somehow rooted in the | idea that jokes have delivery and that if you use that delivery | (rhythm, emphasis, body language) maybe you could say anything | and be funny. | | Reminds me of the Code Geass abridged series Code MENT (most | famously known for the Soup Store[0] meme) which relies on this | type of humor heavily. Most of the jokes in it aren't really | funny on their own and are essentially just nonsensical | statements delivered in strange and distinctive ways rapid fire | while VERY loosely related to the plot of Code Geass. But with | the right delivery the lines become hilarious and easily | quotable: just look at how many Soup Store parodies there are. | | [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAUnDDTz30k | thaumasiotes wrote: | I had a somewhat similar feeling watching _How I Met Your | Mother_ -- there are many places where it 's obvious that the | show expects you to laugh, but in most of those places, there | is no joke. Instead, there's a continuity reference. | amadeuspagel wrote: | "What is purple and hums? An electric grape. Why does it hum? | Because it doesn't know the words." | texaslonghorn5 wrote: | I remember a similarly themed non joke where the meaningless | and irrelevant punchline was "no soap, radio." | [deleted] | saghm wrote: | When my father first told me that joke when I was a kid (with | "two elephants in a bathtub" rather than one being hippo), I | just assumed that the elephant who wanted the soap was named | Radio. | Todd wrote: | There was a thread on HN a week ago about this. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32250203 | Apocryphon wrote: | What a delightful practice | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio#Execution_of_the. | .. | [deleted] | reaperducer wrote: | For those of you in the Apple ecosystem, Siri was loaded up with | a new batch of dad jokes on August first. | | Every night before I go to bed, I end the day with, "Hey, Siri, | tell me a joke." Why is Cinderella so bad at | soccer? She keeps running away from the ball. | | Loading up Siri with new jokes every month would be my dream | Apple job. | xxs wrote: | Yeah 'soccer' - positioning is very important and running away | from the ball is not necessarily incorrect, esp. for the | defense. | rfrey wrote: | A few comments above this one there is a subthread on the | meaning of "pedant", you might enjoy it. | dkurth wrote: | Re: the age of "That's what she said": | | I thumbed through The Frogs (Aristophanes) at a used book store | once. This play was written circa 400 BC. In the prologue, one | character is offering to entertain the audience with a few jokes, | and another character says, "Yes, but not 'That's what she | said.'" The joke was too over-used. | | I was astounded to think that the joke was _that_ old! But it 's | actually not. The old jokes of ancient Athenians were a little | too obscure, I guess, so the translator picked a modern example. | Still, that translation of The Frogs is from the 1950s, so the | joke was old at least that far back. (Here is the translation: | https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.65406/2015.6540...) | shagie wrote: | I looked up some other translations... | | 1908 - "Not "Oh, my poor blisters!" - | https://archive.org/details/frogstranslatedi00arisuoft/page/... | | 1995 - "Anything but "What a strain!"" | https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... | | Original greek - "plen g' 'os thlibomai.'" - | https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text... | | This appears to translate as "except 'as I grieve.'" according | to Google Translate - | https://translate.google.com/?sl=el&tl=en&text=plen%20g'%20'... | thaumasiotes wrote: | > This appears to translate as "except 'as I grieve.'" | according to Google Translate | | That Perseus link will give you dictionary entries for the | words. Relevant glosses of os appear to be "as; how; so; | thus". thlibomai is the passive form of a verb meaning | "press; squeeze" and metaphorically "oppress; afflict"; | examples in the Great Scott (LSJ) show it being used to | describe a shoe _pinching_ a foot, a shoulder _rubbing | against_ a narrow doorway, lips _pressing against_ each other | in a kiss, and the circumstances of poverty _making things | difficult_ for a poor person. | | So it's easy to imagine that it might feature in the | punchline of a pun. But even without constructing a pun, it | would be easy to translate that as something like "see how I | suffer?", which could be the punchline to any number of | jokes. It sounds like a good translation of the modern | punchline "first world problems", for example. | riquito wrote: | that one looks more like a very liberal translation to match | the present audience (see shagie comment) | cafeinux wrote: | Well, that's what dkurth said. | cm2187 wrote: | Favorite ww2 joke: | https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1u11t9/an_raf_vet_is... | coldtea wrote: | > _This is the largest category. You can see what's being | attempted, but the joke utterly fails. Sometimes it fails so hard | that it almost works as anti-humor. Overwhelmingly these are a | variant of "Once this guy did something dumb."_ | | What the author doesn't get is that those are meant not just as | ha-ha jokes, but also as ironic comments on behavior. E.g., his | example on this category: | | "A pedant was looking for his book for many days but could not | find it. By chance as he was eating lettuce and turned a certain | corner he saw the book lying there. Later meeting a friend who | was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said, "Do not worry but | buy some lettuces and eat them at the corner, when you turn it | and go a little ways you fill find it." | | This is an ironic remark on how people think what worked for them | circumstancially, it will work for others, even in another | situation. E.g. this joke could be used almost verbatim as a | ironic critique of modern-day cargo cult of success (where | copying BS circumstancial things a rich person does, like "waking | up at 6am" or "only eat Soylent to save time") is supposed to be | how you find success. | | Or take: | | "Another person who was going away wrote to a pedant that he | should buy him some books. But he regarded the request lightly | and said to him on his return, "I did not receive your letter | which you sent concerning the books."" | | The joke here is not about "someone saying something dump", but | rather poking fun at "the check is in the post" kind of behavior. | | Moving on: "Cumaeans are stupid. I'm not sure what the Cumaeans | did to deserve this, but there's a whole section with jokes like | this" | | The point is not Cumaeans, and those kind of jokes at some group | (from the Polish to rednecks) are a staple all across the world - | including by those groups made fun of themselves. | | Or one he is confused about, which is perfectly clear: | | "A pedant had purchased a pair of breeches and since they were | very tight and he had difficulty in getting into them, he pulled | all the hair off himself." | | It just a critique of people doing something supposedly to help | with a situation, that actually has zero returns. (the guy | couldn't fit in his clothes, so he shaved his body hair - as if | that would make much of dent to his body volume). | | One can see that there are tons of examples of this behavior in | modern life (and, alas, in programming). | | The author says he is especially confused about this joke, but | the meaning is, once again, totally clear: | | "A shrewd fellow whilst wrestling fell into the mud and in order | that he might not seem to be clumsy, he got up entirely covered | with mud and stood conceitedly through the whole contest." | | It's again poking fun at the well known "save face" behavior, | that if you accidently fail at something, you can try make it | appear like you didn't fail, but rather intended what happened. | There are like 100 examples of the same exact behavior in modern | comedy movies. | | In essense, the author appears to take the jokes too literaly or | as actual advice, fails to see their point, and in general | appears to be quite the ...pedant, like the butt of some of those | jokes! | amadeuspagel wrote: | > "A pedant had purchased a pair of breeches and since they | were very tight and he had difficulty in getting into them, he | pulled all the hair off himself." | | > It just a critique of people doing something supposedly to | help with a situation, that actually has zero returns. (the guy | couldn't fit in his clothes, so he shaved his body hair - as if | that would make much of dent to his body volume). | | I understood this joke differently: You're supposed to pull the | breeches to get into them, but the guy pulled his hair instead. | kevin___ wrote: | Yeah, I appreciated this article -- will confess I definitely | thought the joke originated with The Office. I think the author | just missed a lot of the punchlines in the jokes that they | didn't find funny, many of these formats are still in use | today! | | The one you describe is a classic format: someone has a | problem, then through accidental, unrelated circumstances, | solves it. They meet someone else with the same problem, and | the punchline is that their advice is "have you tried..?" | | > A pedant having fallen into a pit called out continually to | summon help. When no one answered, he said to himself, "I am a | fool if I do not give all a beating when I get out in order | that in the future they shall answer me and furnish me with a | ladder." | | The author ends being unsure their strategy is sound -- but the | point of the joke is that it's clearly not sound, and one that | would only make sense to a pedant. | | > "Another person who was going away wrote to a pedant that he | should buy him some books. But he regarded the request lightly | and said to him on his return, "I did not receive your letter | which you sent concerning the books."" | | The punchline is that the pedant clearly received the letter, | or he wouldn't know to say that the he's claiming to have not | received concerned books. Today it might be: "Hey, did you get | my text message?" "The one asking if you could borrow my car? | No, I didn't." | fugalfervor wrote: | macspoofing wrote: | >Many people who only recently watched the US version of The | Office seem to think that Michael Scott invented That's what she | said | | He didn't invent it, but he brough it back. | tootie wrote: | Part of his character was his relentless imitation of classic | comedians. He does terrible impressions of Bill Cosby, Rodney | Dangerfield, Henny Youngman, Dan Aykroyd. He wins over Holly | when she recognizes his Jon Lovitz impersonation. | z9znz wrote: | Sorry, as a self-discovered empath... | | > Why enjoy this and not videos of people falling off of | skateboards | | Because watching people suffer makes me _really_ suffer. | | That's why the Office and other Ricky Gervais self-deprecation | shows were fun but also very painful. However, his After Life | series was incredibly touching. Even thinking about it makes me | emotional. | fleddr wrote: | A seal walks into a bar, hops on a chair and orders a beer. | | Bar tender: "A talking seal! I've never seen anything like this. | You should go work in a circus!" | | Seal: "Why? Does the circus need microservice architects?" | justusthane wrote: | What do you call a black guy sitting at the front of a plane? | | A pilot. | fleddr wrote: | A man sits on the train and as he looks up, he sees a dinosaur | sitting across him. | | "A dinosaur? on the train? What on earth is happening?" | | Dinosaur: "Well, don't get used to it. Tomorrow my car is | fixed". | justusthane wrote: | Two muffins are sitting in an oven. The first muffin says, | "Man, sure is getting warm in here." The second muffin says, | "GOOD LORD, IT'S A TALKING MUFFIN!" | dieselgate wrote: | In regards to old jokes this just made me think of "phallic | imagery" being discovered as graffiti in Roman cities/Pompeii. | | Along with "And he says, 'do you love me,' and she says, 'no! But | that's a real nice ski mask'" | bambax wrote: | > _One of the twin brothers died and a pedant meeting the | survivor asked him, "Did you die, or was it your brother?"_ | | When I was young someone told me a very, very similar joke and | attributed it to Mark Twain: "We were twins. One of us died. I | could never tell if it was my brother or I." | wwilim wrote: | I recently found an article about Ancient Roman jokes. My | favourite went something like this. Apparently, "logic jokes" are | ancient as well. | | > A man asked a friend to buy two 15-year old slaves for him next | time he visits the market. After a few days, the friend returns | and says: "I couldn't find any 15-year old slaves at the market, | so I bought you one 30-year old slave." | blippage wrote: | Michael Jackson goes up to Elton John: "I'll swap you a ten for | two fives." | mulmen wrote: | Old farmhand wisdom: | | "One boy is worth half a man. Two is worth nothing." | | Heard that one after wasting 10 minutes chatting instead of | loading the truck. | mgkimsal wrote: | Dorian Gray jokes _never_ get old... | russellbeattie wrote: | I happened to see a black and white video of Flip Wilson telling | his infamous baby joke on the Tonight Show [1], and thought to | myself that I _barely_ know who he was, let alone anyone born | after me. | | Seems like a great way to build a following on TikTok would just | be to go through the countless hours of standup comedy that was | shown night after night on late night TV in the 50s and 60s, | cherry pick the best bits and just start making clips. Even if | you were called out for copying, a funny bit is a funny bit. | Think of the wealth of material from George Burns, Milton Berle | or Carol Burnett that could be reintroduced to the world as 30 | second vids. | | 1. https://youtu.be/xG3v_kA0Stw | larsrc wrote: | Even some of the puns in Shakespeare's plays have become lost due | to language and social change. I would not be surprised if a | bunch of the old jokes, especially the apparently non-sensical | ones, are puns or have punny elements. | dtech wrote: | especially double entendres or meanings more common in speaking | language than writing language, or theater for Ancient Greek, | might very well have been lost to time. | joshuaissac wrote: | There are some renditions of Shakespeare's plays with | pronunciations from where and when they were written. It | recaptures some of the puns and jokes that are not apparent in | most modern accents. | | https://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s | bambax wrote: | Shakespeare didn't recoil from putting puns in the titles of | his plays either! For example, "nothing" was a placeholder for | ladyparts (no-thing: the absence of the 'thing', the thing | being, of course, the penis). | | And so, "Much Ado About Nothing" doesn't really mean "a lot of | fuss for no reason". Or maybe it does, but it carries a strong | double entendre: "make noise for the pussy". | scrypter wrote: | ""That's what she said" - Some Guy" -Michael Scott | jodrellblank wrote: | Not as old, but there is an Esperanto book of "113 humorous | things" from around 1910, and so many of them are mother-in-law | jokes or husbands and wives hating each other, e.g. | | 15. "Mother, I don't want to marry Ricardo, he says that Hell | doesn't exist!". "Calm youself, little daughter, when I am his | mother-in-law I will convince him of it". | | 18. is roughly "In a country it rained (a lot or a little?). One | farmer said 'This year, out of the ground will come everthing we | put beneath it'. His colleague said 'By God, don't say that, | friend! My mother-in-law is down there!'". | | 21. A widower was showing some friendly guests around his garden. | "Look", he said, "There is the tree where my three unhappy wives | hanged themselves". One of the attendees, who was a husband, | asked for a cutting from the tree - that he might plant it in his | garden. | | 24. A fiance gave confession on the day of his wedding. | Afterwards he said "Father, you forgot to give me the | punishment". "No", said the clever priest, "you already have it". | | 30. "See that man? I hate him". "Why?". "He asked before me for | my wife's hand, and she refused him!". | | 78. "Dear friend, why don't you want your son to marry?". "I | don't want my wife to become a mother-in-law". | | 90. "How is your mother-in-law doing?". "She's getting better, | but I haven't lost all hope." | | 96. A servant calls to his sleeping master 'Sir! Sir! Your | mother-in-law just died!'. "Oh! How much sadness I will have in | the morning when I wake from this dream" replied the son-in-law. | | Some are plausible jokes but not very funny. e.g. | | 14. "Waiter, Omelette!", "We have none". "Meat?" "Also none". | "Fish?" "Also none". "So why say one can eat according to their | desires?" "Sir, it means the desire of the restaurant owner". | | 29. "The drum you sold me makes no sound". "I hoped as much". | "And why do you make drums?" "To sell them". | | 35. "Is God everywhere?" "Yes, father". "Then he is in the yard | of your house?". "No, father". "Why not, stupid boy?". "My house | doesn't have a yard, respected teacher." | | Some are reasonable: | | 19. In a Barber's shop: "How would you like me to shave you?" | "Silently". | | 10. A 60 year old woman and her daughter looks the same age. "One | claims they are two daughters" says the census taker, "but you | could more rightly say they are two mothers". | | 71. "It'd be a miracle if I win the lottery." "What's your | number?" "None." "Then how will you be able to win?". "That's why | I said it would be a miracle!". | | [1] http://www.elerno.cn/elibro/113humorajoj.pdf | loxs wrote: | Before reading this, I thought I am sort of proficient in | English. Not any more... Haven't looked up so many words in years | papandada wrote: | Never get into a synonym duel with a translator ... you will | not prevail | VyseofArcadia wrote: | I've come to appreciate Brooklyn 99's "title of your sex tape" as | a fresh new twist on "that's what she said". I especially like | how it's usually nonsensical or sad. | | > I can't find anything, and I don't know what to do! | | > Title of your sex tape | geocrasher wrote: | I have been known to tell jokes that have punchlines that are | twisted in such a way that if you don't catch on, you will think | I am either an idiot, or a horrible person. Two | guys have fast cars and decide one day to have a contest to see | whose car is faster. I can't tell you the rest of the joke | though. It's racist. | | See, if you get it, you laugh. If you don't get it, I'm suddenly | a very bad person. I told this joke in public, to a stranger, | once. They thanked me for not telling them the punchline (not | realizing of course that that WAS the punchline). I don't tell | this joke anymore. Well, except here. But there's context. | leonhard wrote: | Ok I'll bite. I don't get it but I also don't even think you're | racist, I'm just completely lost. Maybe it's a non-native | English issue? Please elaborate | jpswade wrote: | https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatsWhatSheSaid | jonathankoren wrote: | Nasruddin had some good jokes. | | Mullah Nasruddin was traveling when he came to a town. The elders | of the town asked him to give a sermon at the temple, which he | grudgingly accepted. On the appointed day, he strode to the | pulpit and asked the congregation, "Do you know what I'm about to | say?" To which they replied, no they did not. He looked at them | with disappointment and said, "Well, I'm not going to waste my | time talking a bunch of people that don't know what I'm talking | about," and left. | | Another: | | Nasruddin was taking a shortcut through a cemetery, when passed a | funeral. Speaking to the mourners, the officiant said, "Today we | have buried a politician and a good man." Shocked, Nasruddin | said, "I did not know that times were so hard here, that you had | to bury a two people in a single grave." | danielodievich wrote: | When I was 10 or 11, my father slipped me a book of Hodja | Nasruddin. I _LOVED_ it and went around sprouting witticisms | and clever jokes to my friends. Most of them landed well, with | an occasional thud or kids rolling their eyes at me at the | weirdness or oldness of the jokes. Some of those still come up | in my day to day use. Timeless stuff! | renewiltord wrote: | Hilarious! I think this is made doubly amusing by the fact that I | make jokes like the ones in his "Total Failure" category. | | > _A pedant was looking for his book for many days but could not | find it. By chance as he was eating lettuce and turned a certain | corner he saw the book lying there. Later meeting a friend who | was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said, "Do not worry but | buy some lettuces and eat them at the corner, when you turn it | and go a little ways you fill find it."_ | | For instance, I was in a motorcycle accident recently, but also | coincidentally got a great deal on a Peloton. Someone asked me | how I got it for cheaper and I explained that it involved first | learning to ride a motorcycle and then colliding with a car. | | Personally, I found the whole thing hilarious, but written down | it sounds totally nonsensical, which makes it even funnier. | fleddr wrote: | A recent favorite, which you can use whenever something bad | happens in the world: | | "My grandfather of 73 y/o didn't fight in WW1 and WW2 to let it | come to this!" | | "What?? He wasn't even born in WW1, and a toddler in WW2!" | | "Like I said, he _didn 't_ fight". | anyfoo wrote: | > (I can't enjoy this kind of thing [The Office] --I feel only | agony. Why enjoy this and not videos of people falling off of | skateboards? But I guess most people are different.) | | This was only a tangent, but I agree with this. I really don't | like "cringe" humor. | | There seems to be an entire British subgenre catering to that | (which apparently the British original of The Office is a part | of), and _only_ to that. It 's pretty extreme. As far as I know | The Office in the US was retooled to be more "funny" than the | original, which was apparently just cringe. (Didn't watch it so | it was hard to say, but I've tried to watch other similar British | shows like that.) | | Fortunately it's only a subgenre, because there's plenty of other | British comedy that is absolutely, and famously, fantastic... If | you haven't watched Coupling, Look Around You, or The Peter | Serafinowicz show, you're really missing out! | closewith wrote: | The reason this kind of cringe-worthy humour becomes popular is | that almost everyone identifies with one or more of characters. | When they're young and/or insecure, it seems almost unbearable | to watch, but they're not sure why. As they grow older, it | becomes relatable as they become less self-conscious and more | self-aware. | Jenk wrote: | At the time of The Office release here (UK) it was a perfect | satire. Many of us (not just in my bubble but according to lots | of popular media outlets) very much had a socially-desperate | David Brent for a boss, try-hard Gareth and drifter Keith as | peers and we very much associated with Tim and/or Dawn who felt | trapped in a world surrounded by the above metaphorically | spinning our wheels in the mud of (then) modern office life | with no prospects or hope in life. | anyfoo wrote: | Obviously it appeals to a lot of people, it wouldn't be so | successful otherwise, and I'm not here to bash people's | taste. It's just that _for me personally_ I probably would | not want to be reminded /wallowing in that in my | entertainment if I was in the same situation, and as someone | who not in that situation it just feels like looking at a | train wreck. But I can totally understand how people feel | differently and it allows them to relate and laugh about it. | Jenk wrote: | What I was trying to say is that I don't think it would | have as much success as it did then, if it were released | today. The number of "lifer" employees with no aspirations | is vanishingly small compared to 20+ years ago. | jmkd wrote: | Nighty Night [0] is the peak of this wonderful (to me) | subgenre. Top question on Google search "Is Nighty Night | funny?" | | Couple of great quotes from the Wikipedia page [1] "The | Guardian called it "an exquisitely vile comic creation" and | adding that "The Office might have popularised the comedy of | embarrassment, but Nighty Night has moved it on." The Times | called it "a blistering wall of superbly unredeemed cruelty | that manages to trample over every social convention in a pair | of cheap stilettos." | | [0]https://www.google.com/search?q=%22nighty+night%22 | [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighty_Night#Reception | FabHK wrote: | > British subgenre | | A British comedy series I can recommend wholeheartedly is _The | IT Crowd_ (available on Netflix, at least in some countries). | | An exemplar of the subgenre "what on earth were they smoking?" | is _The Mighty Boosh_. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mighty_Boosh_(TV_series) | pwdisswordfish0 wrote: | I'm surprised noone has brought up what I recall being told was | the oldest known joke. Not sure about the specifics, but IIRC | it's from a mesopotamian cuneiform tablet and goes something like | "Name something that never happened -- A wife has never farted in | her husband's lap". Supposedly a reference to the common | knowledge at the time that everyone involved (or maybe just the | wife) would vehemently deny it if it did happen, or perhaps | awkwardly pretend it didn't happen, knowing well that everyone | noticed and politely joins in the pretense. | | I don't like it when people act as if these were objectively bad | jokes. Many jokes are very dependent on a specific cultural | moment as well as carefully crafted wording. Lots of current | jokes fall can flat if you slightly change the phrasing, even if | they aren't word play. And then there's delivery, pacing, knowing | your audience... | | Surely widespread literacy and technology allow modern people to | develop comparably sophisticated tastes just by the sheer wealth | of entertainment we consume, but people 5000 years ago were still | people and I'm sure they found humour in similar places as we do. | | edit: here's a source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-joke- | odd-idUSKUA147851200... Again, I would take issue with the | reduction to "toilet humour". Clearly the comedy of manners | aspect plays the larger role, even if farts are somehow eternally | funny. | RajT88 wrote: | I would suggest that humor itself evolves. That we enjoy | flavors of humor which are novel and new and specific to our | cultural moment. | | Internet humor is big on surreal non-sequiturs. I suspect that | while it may have existed as a style of humor before the | internet, that it may not have existed 3000 years ago as a | style of humor. | q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: | Phillip J. Fry, his hand outstretched, holding a stack of | money. | pwdisswordfish0 wrote: | Great Star Trek reference, that's exactly what I mean | pwdisswordfish0 wrote: | I suppose that must be true in as much as technology and | culture influence each other, but while the term "meme" is | fairly new, the phenomenon is quite universal. Like, what's | funny about Kilroy Was Here [0] or drawing that | constructivist S-shape in elementary school [1]? | | Another thing to consider apart from cultural differences and | translations is that a lot can go wrong betwen a hit joke | being told and a scribe getting around to immortalising it. | It's obviously a game of telephone. Comedy is a craft and | written comedy is different from stage comedy. I can imagine | a joke absolutely killing at the end of a stand-up set, but | falling flat when told in isolation, because it was a call- | back or otherwise profited from a primed audience. It's quite | likely that someone might naively retell only the bit that | got the laughs and only then realise their mistake. Or the | shared experience of the audience might elevate a bit to an | in-joke that is only funny to them because they know the | rest. Decades later, only the devolved memes that obliquely | reference this shared knowledge survive in writing and future | generations are left wondering what was wrong with their | ancestors' odd humour. | | Here's hoping future generations will be aware of Douglas | Adams' work, but it seems entirely possible that in a | thousand years, people will speculate why our we found towels | or the number 42 so funny. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S | endofreach wrote: | Totally agree. Though I must say, i believe any joke today that | gets printed on something, is almost certainly an objectively | bad joke. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-04 23:00 UTC)