47 ms·

Old jokes

381 points by Gadiguibou 4y ago

jpswade 4y ago
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatsWhatSheSaid https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatsWhatSheSaid
JasonFruit 4y ago
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 4y ago
  That's funny, your mom told me the same thing!
- Planktonne 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    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
nigerian1981 4y ago
I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
- mech422 4y ago
  Stolen! Currently torturing my friends and co-workers with it :-D
  - nigerian1981 4y ago
    Why thank you!
- cwillu 4y ago
  Error: password must contain at least two capital letters
Digit-Al 4y ago
I wonder why they had such a thing for pedants.
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  Iffy translation of “smarty pants” or “Mr know it all”?
  - derbOac 4y ago
    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".
  - davidw 4y ago
    "Well hello Mr Fancy Pants"
- saxonww 4y ago
  I was wondering the same. Was 'pedant' at the time more like what we'd call 'peasant' today?
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardarji_joke
    - trebbble 4y ago
      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.
renewiltord 4y ago
This Elitch business appears to be wholesale fabrication. Hilarious. Added here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Said_the_actress_to_the_bishop&diff=952787547&oldid=945146576 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/ 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 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    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 4y ago
  Like Lisa Simpson's tiger-repelling rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw
- ragazzina 4y ago
  The joke works maybe as some kind of Sally Anne test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test
coldtea 4y ago
>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!
renewiltord 4y ago
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.
johnfn 4y ago
> 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?
- cecilpl2 4y ago
  One of my favorite Norm MacDonald jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oseqh7SMIvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oseqh7SMIvo
  - nigerian1981 4y ago
    Currently searching for dog houses on Amazon
  - davidw 4y ago
    That was worse than getting rick-rolled.
  - thesuitonym 4y ago
    The shaggy dog story is a time honoured form of anti-humour.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  The funniest part of that for me was the “friend lamenting the loss of his girdle”
  - 4y ago
vlunkr 4y ago
> 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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anamexis 4y ago
  The very next sentence says as much.
- trebbble 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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__ 4y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32346330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32346330
    - trebbble 4y ago
      > 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.
narag 4y ago
I wonder if the point of the amphora is that pitch will cover the decoration or either it will seal the pores.
- derbOac 4y ago
  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.
  - narag 4y ago
    Sure, we used to have one of these in each home to drink cool water: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botijo https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botijo It doesn't work if you add decoration because it needs transpiration to cool the contents.
- t-3 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
  - joveian 4y ago
    I was wondering what other interpretation there could be. Still, while the translator chose a particularly dry way to put it I see that version as more likely. Putting on particularly tight clothing with any body hair at all tends to rip out hair, so I think the joke is about waxing rather than admitting the clothing is just too tight. You can imagine some pantomime after the joke. I've fairly sure I've seen at least one visual version of more or less this joke (in a cartoon). Personally, the idea that someone could invent a basic joke does not make sense to me. People can popularize specific jokes at a specific time but as I see it the jokes themselves are a physical part of the world there to be discovered and only specific detailed phrasing can really be created. Though I guess I would say the same about anything people are said to invent so maybe it is a matter of perspective. Still, I'd be surprised if a good portion of "modern humor" didn't predate homo sapiens as a species.
dkurth 4y ago
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.2015.65406/2015.65406.Aristophanes-Four-Comedies_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.65406/2015.6540...)
- shagie 4y ago
  I looked up some other translations... 1908 - "Not "Oh, my poor blisters!" - https://archive.org/details/frogstranslatedi00arisuoft/page/2/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/frogstranslatedi00arisuoft/page/... 1995 - "Anything but “What a strain!”" https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0032 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... Original greek - "πλήν γ᾽ ‘ὡς θλίβομαι.’" - https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0031:line=1 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=πλήν%20γ᾽%20‘ὡς%20θλίβομαι.’&op=translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=el&tl=en&text=πλήν%20γ᾽%20‘...
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > 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 ὡς appear to be "as; how; so; thus". θλίβομαι 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.
dieselgate 4y ago
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’”
RajT88 4y ago
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.
- silisili 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Jalad 4y ago
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 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!"
- bombcar 4y ago
  Monstrous Regiment by pratchett is basically this joke in novel form.
- thesuitonym 4y ago
  The Soviet economy really was more efficient than ours--their shelves were empty decades ago!
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
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.
- texaslonghorn5 4y ago
  I remember a similarly themed non joke where the meaningless and irrelevant punchline was "no soap, radio."
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    What a delightful practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio#Execution_of_the_prank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio#Execution_of_the...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - saghm 4y ago
    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.
russellbeattie 4y ago
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 https://youtu.be/xG3v_kA0Stw
larsrc 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s
- bambax 4y ago
  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".
racl101 4y ago
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.
reaperducer 4y ago
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 4y ago
  Yeah 'soccer' - positioning is very important and running away from the ball is not necessarily incorrect, esp. for the defense.
  - rfrey 4y ago
    A few comments above this one there is a subthread on the meaning of "pedant", you might enjoy it.
    - xxs 4y ago
      The point is the joke is not funny outside the US (or NA), and that was the joke - not being pedantic.
macspoofing 4y ago
>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 4y ago
  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.
loxs 4y ago
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 4y ago
  Never get into a synonym duel with a translator ... you will not prevail
vorpalhex 4y ago
I got the referenced epub and it's quite humorous, despite some translation difficulty. The very dark jokes are actually quite funny.
mgkimsal 4y ago
Dorian Gray jokes never get old...
VyseofArcadia 4y ago
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
georgeecollins 4y ago
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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- a_e_k 4y ago
  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."
- TillE 4y ago
  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.
t-3 4y ago
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.
wwilim 4y ago
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."
- mulmen 4y ago
  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.
- blippage 4y ago
  Michael Jackson goes up to Elton John: "I'll swap you a ten for two fives."
cm2187 4y ago
Favorite ww2 joke: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1u11t9/an_raf_vet_is_giving_a_talk_about_the_war/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1u11t9/an_raf_vet_is...
- emmelaich 4y ago
  That's similar to a little Johnny joke ... Schoolkids come back from a trip to the farm and the teacher asks them what they saw. Little Johnny says we saw a chicken and a horse and a pig and a fucker and a cow and ... Teacher: Johnny! I'm sure the farmer didn't use that language. Johnny: Yeah he called them 'eifers but we knew what he meant.
bambax 4y ago
> 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."
scrypter 4y ago
""That's what she said" - Some Guy" -Michael Scott
jodrellblank 4y ago
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 http://www.elerno.cn/elibro/113humorajoj.pdf
- rubberpoliceman 4y ago
  > 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. That one can be traced back to Cicero: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesta_Romanorum_Vol._I_(1871)/Of_Hanging https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesta_Romanorum_Vol._I_(187...
jonathankoren 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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!
fleddr 4y ago
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?"
- fleddr 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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!”
- justusthane 4y ago
  What do you call a black guy sitting at the front of a plane? A pilot.
- emmelaich 4y ago
  A grasshopper walks in to a bar. Bartender: hey we have a drink named after you! Grasshopper, confused: What? Kevin?
- spc476 4y ago
  A man walks into a bar. Ouch.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    Two baby seals walk into a club
fleddr 4y ago
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 4y ago
> (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!
- jmkd 4y ago
  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 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22nighty+night%22 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighty_Night#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighty_Night#Reception
- closewith 4y ago
  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 4y ago
  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.
geocrasher 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    It's a pun on the word "race" meaning both "ethnic group" and "contest of speed".
    - leonhard 4y ago
      ohh ok that makes sense, thank you
- anthonypasq 4y ago
  if people dont get your joke its a bad joke
  - geocrasher 4y ago
    I don't disagree :D
nikanj 4y ago
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.
bitcurious 4y ago
“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 4y ago
I didn’t see a mention of Chris Farley. He says it in 2 of his movies from the 90s I believe.
fugalfervor 4y ago
z9znz 4y ago
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.
pwdisswordfish0 4y ago
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-idUSKUA14785120080731 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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    Phillip J. Fry, his hand outstretched, holding a stack of money.
    - pwdisswordfish0 4y ago
      Great Star Trek reference, that’s exactly what I mean
GnarfGnarf 4y ago
I am haunted by the question of whether our ancestors (who were every bit as smart as us) were naïve 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 passé. 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?
- AgentME 4y ago
  Humor and fashion are more interesting when they're more unfamiliar, and the audience has the feeling they're from territory that's not fully explored yet by anyone. Humor and fashion in new mostly-unexplored territory is interesting because it makes the audience feel like they can learn to explore that new territory themselves and come up with new stuff others will find interesting. Old humor and fashion is usually less interesting because there's the understanding that its territory has probably been well explored and mined for content in the past by others, regardless of whether the territory is familiar to a current audience.
  - GnarfGnarf 4y ago
    That's it! Exploring, discovering new territory and learning: that's what makes the difference. Very interesting. Thank you for the explanation.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Some does, some doesn't. The Marx Brothers movies still work, while Bob Hope does not. To pick two TV shows that were popular at the exact same time: the original Bob Newhart Show still totally works, while The Mary Tyler Show is wearing kinda thin. Newhart deliberately avoided any topical humor in his shows, just for that reason.
jedberg 4y ago
Reminds me of an Asimov story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokester Sadly HN doesn't have a spoiler tag otherwise I could tell you why. You'll just have to click the wiki link.
superb-owl 4y ago
As an aside, I think Einstein's religious attitudes are underreported and understudied. There are a couple great sections in The World as I See it [1]: > I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research. > A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man > I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. > I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. Here's a longer quote that is a little more substantive: > there is found a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in a pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance. Indications of this cosmic religious sense can be found even on earlier levels of development—for example, in the Psalms of David and in the Prophets. The cosmic element is much stronger in Buddhism, as, in particular, Schopenhauer's magnificent essays have shown us. The religious geniuses of all times have been distinguished by this cosmic religious sense, which recognizes neither dogmas nor God made in man's image. Consequently there cannot be a church whose chief doctrines are based on the cosmic religious experience. It comes about, therefore, that we find precisely among the heretics of all ages men who were inspired by this highest religious experience; often they appeared to their contemporaries as atheists, but sometimes also as saints. This is the conception of Mysticism I've tried to describe a bit in the past [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_I_See_It_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_I_See_It_(book) [2] https://superbowl.substack.com/p/what-is-mysticism https://superbowl.substack.com/p/what-is-mysticism
hamiltonians 4y ago
this site, dynomight, is always on the top of hacker news. what is the author's secret or method. i want to learn
staplung 4y ago
I feel like there was a somewhat recent post here about an ancient Sumerian joke but I can't find the post now. Anyway, I did find the joke: A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one.' https://popcrush.com/twitter-decipher-punchline-ancient-sumerian-bar-joke/ https://popcrush.com/twitter-decipher-punchline-ancient-sume...
oumua_don17 4y ago
While orthogonal to the topic being discussed, the About section(reproduced below) can be guiding principles for some at least Wondering what to do with your life? Here’s what I suggest: First priority: Your physical health. (No health → no life.) Second priority: Reasonable financial security. (No food → no health.) Third priority: Good relationships with friends and family. (Depressed → no mental health.) After that you can do whatever. The game you’re playing doesn’t have any rules and there’s no way to win.
Waterluvian 4y ago
How many old jokes do we think have an origin that’s still too young?
inasio 4y ago
Reminded me of the book/movie Name of the rose (awesome in both formats). The Macguffin is the single remaining copy, long thought lost, of Aristoteles book on comedy, thought to be a forbidden thing by some of the monks.
franciscop 4y ago
> Category 3: Cumaeans are stupid I haven't heard this in English now that you say it, but in Spanish it's also a whole category of jokes, just instead of "Cumaeans" it's "Lepe" (a small town). "Lepe is known for its strawberries, and for Spanish jokes referring to its inhabitants as stupid." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepe
- sprak 4y ago
  Yes, go into any Swedish book store and you will find books upon books joking about how stupid Norwegians are. In Norway they have the same thing, often the very same jokes, but with the nationalities reversed. I think the Australians and New Zealanders have the same joking culture between them.
  - jon_adler 4y ago
    Mainland Aussies also have Tasmanians to target.
  - zach_garwood 4y ago
    In a similar vein, I grew up in the state of Missouri hearing jokes about how the residents of Arkansas, the state directly south, were dummies. Little did I know that Iowa, the state to the north, had the same jokes about us.
  - franciscop 4y ago
    I'd say it's slightly different; countries always make jokes about neighbor countries, but why this story stroke me and I pointed to the same Spanish reference is that somehow Spain has agreed to make jokes about a tiny otherwise unknown town _within_ the same country.
6yyyyyy 4y ago
>Pelosi Says U.S. Won’t Allow China to Isolate Taiwan ...that's what she said.
foxbee 4y ago
Not sure if this is a joke, but I remember when I was younger the sight or a yellow car (beetle?) would thrust you into attack or defend mode, as this was signal that you could punch one of you mates on the arm. It always confused me. But then again, I was always the one with the sore arm in the end.
- swilliamsio 4y ago
  It was called Punch Buggy when it was for beetles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_buggy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_buggy I definitely also played the yellow car variant. I assume it's the preferred variant nowadays given how rare bugs are.
  - foxbee 4y ago
    I remember a guy in my class at school carried a small yellow toy car in his pocket. At any given moment he would flash it before your eyes, and swiftly after a fist of boney knuckles would come crashing into your arm.
  - zach_garwood 4y ago
    We called it "slug bug."
jeroenhd 4y ago
I'm surprised to see the ancient Sumerian dog joke[1] left out in this overview. It's an excellent example of an ancient pun that loses almost all meaning when translated directly ("a dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one'."), based entirely on the way a specific verb is composed. [1]: https://nitter.net/LinManuelRwanda/status/1505646738627088389 https://nitter.net/LinManuelRwanda/status/150564673862708838...
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
"He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech -- of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities -- but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later." Sir Dinadan The Humorist - from A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Mark_Twain/A_Connecticut_Yankee_In_King_Arthurs_Court/Sir_Dinadan_The_Humorist_p1.html https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Mark_Twain/A_Connecticut_Yan...
ConceptJunkie 4y ago
I remember "NOT!" being a popular thing back in the 90s, and thought it originated then. Like, "Yes, you made up that original joke yourself. NOT!" only to see Steve Martin doing it on an old episode of SNL. Chances are any joke you hear dates back way longer than you imagine."
fuzzfactor 4y ago
About 70 years ago, Tarzan used to be very popular and was also the butt of many jokes featuring his broken English and jungle life. Q. What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill? A. "El-e-phant coming ov-er hill!" Q. What did he say when saw them coming over the hill with their sunglasses on? A. He didn't say anything, he didn't recognize them.

381 points by Gadiguibou 4y ago

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatsWhatSheSaid https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatsWhatSheSaid

JasonFruit 4y ago

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 4y ago
That's funny, your mom told me the same thing!
Planktonne 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  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

nigerian1981 4y ago

I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

mech422 4y ago
Stolen! Currently torturing my friends and co-workers with it :-D
- nigerian1981 4y ago
  Why thank you!
cwillu 4y ago
Error: password must contain at least two capital letters

Digit-Al 4y ago

I wonder why they had such a thing for pedants.

Kaibeezy 4y ago
Iffy translation of “smarty pants” or “Mr know it all”?
- derbOac 4y ago
  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".
- davidw 4y ago
  "Well hello Mr Fancy Pants"
saxonww 4y ago
I was wondering the same. Was 'pedant' at the time more like what we'd call 'peasant' today?
- renewiltord 4y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardarji_joke
  - trebbble 4y ago
    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.

renewiltord 4y ago

This Elitch business appears to be wholesale fabrication. Hilarious. Added here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Said_the_actress_to_the_bishop&diff=952787547&oldid=945146576 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/ 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 4y ago

> 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 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
Like Lisa Simpson's tiger-repelling rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw
ragazzina 4y ago
The joke works maybe as some kind of Sally Anne test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test

coldtea 4y ago

>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!

renewiltord 4y ago

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.

johnfn 4y ago

> 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?

cecilpl2 4y ago
One of my favorite Norm MacDonald jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oseqh7SMIvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oseqh7SMIvo
- nigerian1981 4y ago
  Currently searching for dog houses on Amazon
- davidw 4y ago
  That was worse than getting rick-rolled.
- thesuitonym 4y ago
  The shaggy dog story is a time honoured form of anti-humour.
dieselgate 4y ago
The funniest part of that for me was the “friend lamenting the loss of his girdle”
- 4y ago

vlunkr 4y ago

> 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.

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anamexis 4y ago
The very next sentence says as much.
trebbble 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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__ 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32346330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32346330
  - trebbble 4y ago
    > 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.

narag 4y ago

I wonder if the point of the amphora is that pitch will cover the decoration or either it will seal the pores.

derbOac 4y ago
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.
- narag 4y ago
  Sure, we used to have one of these in each home to drink cool water: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botijo https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botijo It doesn't work if you add decoration because it needs transpiration to cool the contents.
t-3 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
- joveian 4y ago
  I was wondering what other interpretation there could be. Still, while the translator chose a particularly dry way to put it I see that version as more likely. Putting on particularly tight clothing with any body hair at all tends to rip out hair, so I think the joke is about waxing rather than admitting the clothing is just too tight. You can imagine some pantomime after the joke. I've fairly sure I've seen at least one visual version of more or less this joke (in a cartoon). Personally, the idea that someone could invent a basic joke does not make sense to me. People can popularize specific jokes at a specific time but as I see it the jokes themselves are a physical part of the world there to be discovered and only specific detailed phrasing can really be created. Though I guess I would say the same about anything people are said to invent so maybe it is a matter of perspective. Still, I'd be surprised if a good portion of "modern humor" didn't predate homo sapiens as a species.

dkurth 4y ago

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.2015.65406/2015.65406.Aristophanes-Four-Comedies_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.65406/2015.6540...)

shagie 4y ago
I looked up some other translations... 1908 - "Not "Oh, my poor blisters!" - https://archive.org/details/frogstranslatedi00arisuoft/page/2/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/frogstranslatedi00arisuoft/page/... 1995 - "Anything but “What a strain!”" https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0032 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... Original greek - "πλήν γ᾽ ‘ὡς θλίβομαι.’" - https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0031:line=1 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=πλήν%20γ᾽%20‘ὡς%20θλίβομαι.’&op=translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=el&tl=en&text=πλήν%20γ᾽%20‘...
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > 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 ὡς appear to be "as; how; so; thus". θλίβομαι 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.

dieselgate 4y ago

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’”

RajT88 4y ago

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.

silisili 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
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Jalad 4y ago

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 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!"

bombcar 4y ago
Monstrous Regiment by pratchett is basically this joke in novel form.
thesuitonym 4y ago
The Soviet economy really was more efficient than ours--their shelves were empty decades ago!

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

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.

texaslonghorn5 4y ago
I remember a similarly themed non joke where the meaningless and irrelevant punchline was "no soap, radio."
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  What a delightful practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio#Execution_of_the_prank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio#Execution_of_the...
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    [deleted]
- saghm 4y ago
  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.

russellbeattie 4y ago

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 https://youtu.be/xG3v_kA0Stw

larsrc 4y ago

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 4y ago
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 4y ago
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 https://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s
bambax 4y ago
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".

racl101 4y ago

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.

reaperducer 4y ago

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 4y ago
Yeah 'soccer' - positioning is very important and running away from the ball is not necessarily incorrect, esp. for the defense.
- rfrey 4y ago
  A few comments above this one there is a subthread on the meaning of "pedant", you might enjoy it.
  - xxs 4y ago
    The point is the joke is not funny outside the US (or NA), and that was the joke - not being pedantic.

macspoofing 4y ago

>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 4y ago
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.

loxs 4y ago

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 4y ago
Never get into a synonym duel with a translator ... you will not prevail

vorpalhex 4y ago

I got the referenced epub and it's quite humorous, despite some translation difficulty. The very dark jokes are actually quite funny.

mgkimsal 4y ago

Dorian Gray jokes never get old...

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

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

georgeecollins 4y ago

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.

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a_e_k 4y ago
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."
TillE 4y ago
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.

t-3 4y ago

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.

wwilim 4y ago

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."

mulmen 4y ago
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.
blippage 4y ago
Michael Jackson goes up to Elton John: "I'll swap you a ten for two fives."

cm2187 4y ago

Favorite ww2 joke: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1u11t9/an_raf_vet_is_giving_a_talk_about_the_war/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1u11t9/an_raf_vet_is...

emmelaich 4y ago
That's similar to a little Johnny joke ... Schoolkids come back from a trip to the farm and the teacher asks them what they saw. Little Johnny says we saw a chicken and a horse and a pig and a fucker and a cow and ... Teacher: Johnny! I'm sure the farmer didn't use that language. Johnny: Yeah he called them 'eifers but we knew what he meant.

bambax 4y ago

> 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."

scrypter 4y ago

""That's what she said" - Some Guy" -Michael Scott

jodrellblank 4y ago

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 http://www.elerno.cn/elibro/113humorajoj.pdf

rubberpoliceman 4y ago
> 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. That one can be traced back to Cicero: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesta_Romanorum_Vol._I_(1871)/Of_Hanging https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesta_Romanorum_Vol._I_(187...

jonathankoren 4y ago

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 4y ago
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!

fleddr 4y ago

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?"

fleddr 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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!”
justusthane 4y ago
What do you call a black guy sitting at the front of a plane? A pilot.
emmelaich 4y ago
A grasshopper walks in to a bar. Bartender: hey we have a drink named after you! Grasshopper, confused: What? Kevin?
spc476 4y ago
A man walks into a bar. Ouch.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  Two baby seals walk into a club

fleddr 4y ago

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 4y ago

> (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!

jmkd 4y ago
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 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22nighty+night%22 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighty_Night#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nighty_Night#Reception
closewith 4y ago
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 4y ago
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.

geocrasher 4y ago

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 4y ago
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
- jhbadger 4y ago
  It's a pun on the word "race" meaning both "ethnic group" and "contest of speed".
  - leonhard 4y ago
    ohh ok that makes sense, thank you
anthonypasq 4y ago
if people dont get your joke its a bad joke
- geocrasher 4y ago
  I don't disagree :D

nikanj 4y ago

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.

bitcurious 4y ago

“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 4y ago

I didn’t see a mention of Chris Farley. He says it in 2 of his movies from the 90s I believe.

fugalfervor 4y ago

z9znz 4y ago

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.

pwdisswordfish0 4y ago

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-idUSKUA14785120080731 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 4y ago
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 4y ago
  Phillip J. Fry, his hand outstretched, holding a stack of money.
  - pwdisswordfish0 4y ago
    Great Star Trek reference, that’s exactly what I mean

GnarfGnarf 4y ago

I am haunted by the question of whether our ancestors (who were every bit as smart as us) were naïve 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 passé. 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?

AgentME 4y ago
Humor and fashion are more interesting when they're more unfamiliar, and the audience has the feeling they're from territory that's not fully explored yet by anyone. Humor and fashion in new mostly-unexplored territory is interesting because it makes the audience feel like they can learn to explore that new territory themselves and come up with new stuff others will find interesting. Old humor and fashion is usually less interesting because there's the understanding that its territory has probably been well explored and mined for content in the past by others, regardless of whether the territory is familiar to a current audience.
- GnarfGnarf 4y ago
  That's it! Exploring, discovering new territory and learning: that's what makes the difference. Very interesting. Thank you for the explanation.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Some does, some doesn't. The Marx Brothers movies still work, while Bob Hope does not. To pick two TV shows that were popular at the exact same time: the original Bob Newhart Show still totally works, while The Mary Tyler Show is wearing kinda thin. Newhart deliberately avoided any topical humor in his shows, just for that reason.

jedberg 4y ago

Reminds me of an Asimov story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokester Sadly HN doesn't have a spoiler tag otherwise I could tell you why. You'll just have to click the wiki link.

superb-owl 4y ago

As an aside, I think Einstein's religious attitudes are underreported and understudied. There are a couple great sections in The World as I See it [1]: > I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research. > A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man > I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. > I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. Here's a longer quote that is a little more substantive: > there is found a third level of religious experience, even if it is seldom found in a pure form. I will call it the cosmic religious sense. This is hard to make clear to those who do not experience it, since it does not involve an anthropomorphic idea of God; the individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance. Indications of this cosmic religious sense can be found even on earlier levels of development—for example, in the Psalms of David and in the Prophets. The cosmic element is much stronger in Buddhism, as, in particular, Schopenhauer's magnificent essays have shown us. The religious geniuses of all times have been distinguished by this cosmic religious sense, which recognizes neither dogmas nor God made in man's image. Consequently there cannot be a church whose chief doctrines are based on the cosmic religious experience. It comes about, therefore, that we find precisely among the heretics of all ages men who were inspired by this highest religious experience; often they appeared to their contemporaries as atheists, but sometimes also as saints. This is the conception of Mysticism I've tried to describe a bit in the past [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_I_See_It_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_I_See_It_(book) [2] https://superbowl.substack.com/p/what-is-mysticism https://superbowl.substack.com/p/what-is-mysticism

hamiltonians 4y ago

this site, dynomight, is always on the top of hacker news. what is the author's secret or method. i want to learn

staplung 4y ago

I feel like there was a somewhat recent post here about an ancient Sumerian joke but I can't find the post now. Anyway, I did find the joke: A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one.' https://popcrush.com/twitter-decipher-punchline-ancient-sumerian-bar-joke/ https://popcrush.com/twitter-decipher-punchline-ancient-sume...

oumua_don17 4y ago

While orthogonal to the topic being discussed, the About section(reproduced below) can be guiding principles for some at least Wondering what to do with your life? Here’s what I suggest: First priority: Your physical health. (No health → no life.) Second priority: Reasonable financial security. (No food → no health.) Third priority: Good relationships with friends and family. (Depressed → no mental health.) After that you can do whatever. The game you’re playing doesn’t have any rules and there’s no way to win.

Waterluvian 4y ago

How many old jokes do we think have an origin that’s still too young?

inasio 4y ago

Reminded me of the book/movie Name of the rose (awesome in both formats). The Macguffin is the single remaining copy, long thought lost, of Aristoteles book on comedy, thought to be a forbidden thing by some of the monks.

franciscop 4y ago

> Category 3: Cumaeans are stupid I haven't heard this in English now that you say it, but in Spanish it's also a whole category of jokes, just instead of "Cumaeans" it's "Lepe" (a small town). "Lepe is known for its strawberries, and for Spanish jokes referring to its inhabitants as stupid." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepe

sprak 4y ago
Yes, go into any Swedish book store and you will find books upon books joking about how stupid Norwegians are. In Norway they have the same thing, often the very same jokes, but with the nationalities reversed. I think the Australians and New Zealanders have the same joking culture between them.
- jon_adler 4y ago
  Mainland Aussies also have Tasmanians to target.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  In a similar vein, I grew up in the state of Missouri hearing jokes about how the residents of Arkansas, the state directly south, were dummies. Little did I know that Iowa, the state to the north, had the same jokes about us.
- franciscop 4y ago
  I'd say it's slightly different; countries always make jokes about neighbor countries, but why this story stroke me and I pointed to the same Spanish reference is that somehow Spain has agreed to make jokes about a tiny otherwise unknown town _within_ the same country.

6yyyyyy 4y ago

>Pelosi Says U.S. Won’t Allow China to Isolate Taiwan ...that's what she said.

foxbee 4y ago

Not sure if this is a joke, but I remember when I was younger the sight or a yellow car (beetle?) would thrust you into attack or defend mode, as this was signal that you could punch one of you mates on the arm. It always confused me. But then again, I was always the one with the sore arm in the end.

swilliamsio 4y ago
It was called Punch Buggy when it was for beetles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_buggy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_buggy I definitely also played the yellow car variant. I assume it's the preferred variant nowadays given how rare bugs are.
- foxbee 4y ago
  I remember a guy in my class at school carried a small yellow toy car in his pocket. At any given moment he would flash it before your eyes, and swiftly after a fist of boney knuckles would come crashing into your arm.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  We called it "slug bug."

jeroenhd 4y ago

I'm surprised to see the ancient Sumerian dog joke[1] left out in this overview. It's an excellent example of an ancient pun that loses almost all meaning when translated directly ("a dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one'."), based entirely on the way a specific verb is composed. [1]: https://nitter.net/LinManuelRwanda/status/1505646738627088389 https://nitter.net/LinManuelRwanda/status/150564673862708838...

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

"He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech -- of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities -- but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later." Sir Dinadan The Humorist - from A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Mark_Twain/A_Connecticut_Yankee_In_King_Arthurs_Court/Sir_Dinadan_The_Humorist_p1.html https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Mark_Twain/A_Connecticut_Yan...

ConceptJunkie 4y ago

I remember "NOT!" being a popular thing back in the 90s, and thought it originated then. Like, "Yes, you made up that original joke yourself. NOT!" only to see Steve Martin doing it on an old episode of SNL. Chances are any joke you hear dates back way longer than you imagine."

fuzzfactor 4y ago

About 70 years ago, Tarzan used to be very popular and was also the butt of many jokes featuring his broken English and jungle life. Q. What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill? A. "El-e-phant coming ov-er hill!" Q. What did he say when saw them coming over the hill with their sunglasses on? A. He didn't say anything, he didn't recognize them.