[HN Gopher] The Dubious Art of the Dad Joke
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The Dubious Art of the Dad Joke
Author : jamesfe
Score : 71 points
Date : 2022-04-21 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| My current torture device: _Someone glued my deck of cards
| together and I just can't deal with it!_
| mjklin wrote:
| I stayed up all night wondering where the sun went, then it
| dawned on me!
| floxy wrote:
| I was addicted to soap. But now I'm clean.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| My unfounded theory: As with most miscommunication and conflict,
| the 'conflict' between 'dad' joke tellers and youthful audience
| is because the two parties are using the same thing (jokes) for
| different purposes. To describe people very, very generally:
|
| 'Youth' are displaying their social capacity - their humor, their
| communication ability, their ability to navigate social
| situations, their ability to play, etc. They are trying to show
| how clever they can be in order to attract others, and maybe due
| to living in competitive social situations (school). The level of
| funny and socially cleverness is the whole point. The audience is
| trying to find fault, to a degree.
|
| 'Dads' and older adults of all types are trying to bond and model
| loving behavior, especially with the youth with whom the older
| adults are rarely competing. The audience is presumed to be
| trying to bond too - they are trying to find the love and
| enjoyment. A dumb joke adds to the humor, because now the teller
| becomes a target of laughter, and models vulnerability and trust.
|
| When the 'dad' tells a dumb joke, the two parties understand it
| completely differently. One thinks or says, 'Oh my god, that's so
| embarrassing!'. The other thinks, 'Yes, you get it! :D'
| conductr wrote:
| This sounds quite familiar to my experience with my 3 year old.
| He tells jokes back to me that are just as absurd and we try to
| one up each other. Since he's learned a good deal of vocabulary
| and matching and opposites, he finds things that unexpectedly
| clash hilarious
|
| knock knock ... porcupine who? Porcupine bulldozer - makes no
| sense why those things belong together and that's what makes it
| funny. Then we'll laugh and he'll ask me knock knock and come
| up with something just as ridiculous.
|
| For me, it's totally a bonding experience. I get to see what
| makes him laugh. Try to stump him. Sometimes come up with one
| spontaneously that surprises him. And generally, be my kids
| best friend at this age.
|
| I'm also a serious adult. I don't joke around with my friends
| like I did in my youth. My hangout sessions with friends are
| all calendared weeks/months ahead. I have friends, we joke, but
| it's different and not side splitting type jokes; more like
| chuckles. Before my son, I couldn't tell you how long it had
| been since I laughed to tears (10+ years probably). So this
| helps me rediscover my humor, bond with a kid like I did when I
| was a kid when I built my strongest friendships and relive my
| youth in a way.
|
| I'm in 40s with a 3 year old kid and what I don't quite
| understand is, don't dads of all ages do this? Is it really a
| 35+ thing? Or is that because when the kid is a teen is when
| they start thinking dad jokes are cringeworthy instead of
| funny.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I'm also a serious adult. I don't joke around with my
| friends like I did in my youth. My hangout sessions with
| friends are all calendared weeks/months ahead. I have
| friends, we joke, but it's different and not side splitting
| type jokes; more like chuckles.
|
| I see adults do that, but I don't understand it. To me,
| 'serious' means having consequential responsibilities,
| prioritizing them, and reliably delivering on them. That
| doesn't rule out side-splitting laughs when it doesn't
| interfere with the responsibilities, does it?
| drchiu wrote:
| Yes, definitely. One either graduates to being able to not take
| oneself seriously (ie. by telling embarrassing and not-mean
| jokes, and sometimes being on the receiving end of one) or not.
|
| I'd like to think dad jokes are a good thing.
| dwringer wrote:
| There is a lot of overlap but plenty of self-deprecating
| jokes are way too blue to be considered "dad jokes". Still I
| think you're right and that's just a variation of the same
| thing. Just... "adult" dad jokes. Makes me think of watching
| podcasts with people like the late greats Norm Macdonald,
| Gilbert Gottfried, and Bob Saget.
| lmkg wrote:
| NSFW dad jokes are called uncle jokes.
| pseudotrash wrote:
| What are you doing step uncle?
| christophilus wrote:
| I can only speak for myself, but I tell dad jokes 100% for the
| "Oh, my god, that's so embarrassing!" response, and really no
| other reason. The bigger the sigh / groan / more exaggerated
| the eye-roll, the better.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm not supposed to say this on HN, but you're a troll! ;)
| lupire wrote:
| Also, the child doesn't remember when they were younger and
| loved the joke.
| jawns wrote:
| My kids have a habit of shouting, "Dad joke!" whenever I make a
| groaner.
|
| The other day, my wife made a great pun, and my son said, "Dad
| joke!"
|
| "No, it's a mom joke," she clarified. Then she educated them.
|
| "There are two differences between dad jokes and mom jokes.
| Number one, I'm a mom, not a dad, so I tell mom jokes."
|
| "What's the other difference?" a kid asked.
|
| "Number two," she sighed, looking in my direction. "Dad jokes are
| relentless."
| tantalor wrote:
| I don't get it?
| lmkg wrote:
| If a dad joke isn't funny, a dad will keep telling the joke
| until it becomes funny. This will eventually happen. In the
| limit, the act of telling the joke becomes the actual source
| of humor.
|
| This type of meta-humor takes some age and maturity to
| understand. A dedicated dad will tell the same joke for
| years, waiting for the child to become old enough to
| appreciate it.
| conductr wrote:
| As a dad, these are the best dad jokes. Only beat by when
| you set it up so well, your kid tells the joke back at you
| at a moment that contextually makes perfect sense. That's
| pure gold.
| themadturk wrote:
| As a dad (who tells dad jokes), she's illustrating the fact
| that nothing stops us from telling dad jokes. We are
| relentless.
|
| "Hi, Relentless. I'm Dad."
| motohagiography wrote:
| I think jokes ground us to reality by interrupting the logic of
| ideas. The effects of people spinning and iterating on ideas
| without having them reconciled to humor or truth are pretty
| obvious. A great example is emo/goth kids (I was one) who
| construct and live-by the rules of a narrative fantasy governed
| by how well it reinforces an (aesthetic) filter on our reflection
| of self. We were pretty much the poster children for absent and
| unfunny fathers.
|
| Also, laughter is involuntary. I take humor very seriously
| because all humor implies the necessary existence of truth, where
| every joke is a kind of figure/ground relationship against it.
| Dad jokes are an essential education that uses paradox and
| collisions in language to demonstrate to kids there is a self and
| experience moored to truth that is separate from the artifacts of
| language and narrative. Our self and ego also speak in language,
| and if there's one thing dads do, it's moderate your ego.
|
| The link between humor and aggression in the article is
| interesting, especially because a father who lacks a certain
| level of natual masculine aggression is going to be percieved as
| insufficiently powerful, competent, or trustworthy, or lacking in
| the credibility to help ground a kids personality and identity to
| fixtures of truth and reality. An inability to make Dad jokes
| could be an example of that.
|
| Personally, my pet theory is language begins mainly as a tool for
| mothers to keep their children safe, so the axioms of it are
| almost all necessarily negative, as it's initially used to warn
| of danger or disgust and shame, whereas love and affection are
| expressed physically. However, it means the self that is an
| artifact of language is also rooted in those things unless some
| dad shows you the limits of them and of how seriously you should
| take your narrative self.
|
| When we think of a toxic male, it usually means is he is a
| shameless bro who doesn't respond to expressions of disgust or
| threats of witholding approval, and he usually learned it from
| another man, usually his father, who was probably pretty funny as
| well. If you pay attention, Dad jokes diffuse neuroticism,
| anxiety, shame, and the remnants of the levers for those
| necessary warnings we got as toddlers and are arguably necessary
| to us develop as men and women.
| dkarl wrote:
| > a father who lacks a certain level of natual masculine
| aggression is going to be percieved as insufficiently powerful,
| competent, or trustworthy, or lacking in the credibility to
| help ground a kids personality and identity to fixtures of
| truth reality. An inability to make Dad jokes would be an
| example of that.
|
| I don't think dad jokes relate to masculinity that way. I think
| they are more a display of non-masculinity from someone who is
| expected to be masculine. In a way they reflect the softening
| of masculinity that comes with turning your attention away from
| masculine achievement and towards nurturing. You get less
| prideful and more goofy; less tuned into adult reality and more
| tuned into kid reality. Instead of trying to be the most grown
| up grown-up in the room, you embrace childish thinking so you
| can meet your kids where they are, and you have so much fun
| that you decide to keep visiting, say, six-year-old logic even
| years after your kids have grown out of it. I think that's why
| people find dad jokes endearing, because they show someone
| violating the norms of adult (and masculine) dignity for the
| sake of making their family smile. Unlike other humor, a dad
| joke doesn't demonstrate intelligence, social dominance, or
| even much social acuity.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I literally told that brown and sticky joke to my 3 year old this
| morning and he loved it!
| jacobkg wrote:
| My take on the Dad joke:
|
| A "Dad" joke is usually characterized by relying heavily on dumb
| puns and wordplay. I now believe that this is not because Dads
| inherently like puns but rather that two aspects of child
| development happen to coincide, namely:
|
| -Between ages 2 and 6 or so children often develop the ability to
| giggle uncontrollably in a way that is so utterly endearing that
| it practically takes your breathe away. It's incredible and
| addicting and pure and wholesome and wonderful. But you have to
| work for it because with their rapidly growing, novelty seeking
| brains they rarely explode with giggles at the same thing twice
|
| - At the same age the child is learning language and acquiring
| vocabulary. I believe that this leads to them especially enjoying
| puns and silly wordplay, because it connects so well with what
| they are spending an enormous amount of brainpower focused on.
|
| The enormous positive feedback loop of sometimes being rewarded
| with joyous laughter in response to low-brow wordplay rewires the
| Dad's brain. The kid will grow out of this but some Dads spend
| the rest of their lives chasing the Dragon.
|
| So, when a Dad tells a "Dad joke", they are really trying to
| rekindle those giggles from when you (or their child) was 4 and
| found nothing more hilarious than words
| yboris wrote:
| One of my favorite books is _Inside Jokes_ Using Humor to
| Reverse-Engineer the Mind.
|
| The gist is that humor is the "joy of debugging". Our brains
| are inference machines and make a lot of conclusions that might
| eventually end up being incorrect. If we didn't have a joy-
| bringing mechanism in our brains to clean up the erroneous
| cruft we would less-likely perform this important maintenance.
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inside-jokes
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I don't know about that, man. I think it's just men over 35 or
| so no matter what. I'm 41 with no kids and love dad jokes, not
| to try and rekindle the feeling of feedback from a 4 year-old
| since I haven't regularly interacted with 4 year-olds since I
| was a 4 year-old myself.
| historia_novae wrote:
| I'm now at the age where puns are dad jokes because it's my
| dad laughing to them. It was pretty satisfaying few days ago
| when he was yelling " _vos gueules_ " (shut up) at birds, to
| which I said "That why they're called _Vogel_ in German ",
| and made him laugh out loud.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I'm 30 and I love dad jokes. And I hate them at the exact
| same time. Like I'll hate that the person said it and want to
| bop them over the head, but I will also chuckle or smile at
| the bad joke.
|
| I love getting that same sort of pained but happy feedback
| from others which is why I will tell them myself.
| radiorental wrote:
| Dad here, I agree with all of the above with a caveat... my
| kids are now 9 and 11.
|
| After a long road trip when they're farking around in the back
| of the car I'll start throwing down some dad jokes. They soon
| plead for me to stop.
|
| There's something agonizing about processing a good Dad joke,
| it's now become torture for them. The deeper and more twisted
| the pun the better.
|
| Maybe I'm about to reach Peak Dad?
| fknorangesite wrote:
| 100%. Once they've grown up a little bit, they recognize what
| you're doing; the game now changes from "how can I make this
| kid giggle" to "how can I make this (pre-)teenager roll their
| eyes" _with the same joke_?
| le-mark wrote:
| The best is when they start making "dad" jokes of their own,
| back at you. I had no idea 4 or 5 year olds could do it but
| they can.
| plasticchris wrote:
| My kid got accused of being a little dad due to her mastery
| of the genre. I taught her well :)
| adolph wrote:
| Maybe you don't mean to suggest that all puns are "dumb?" For
| if you did someone would certainly shake a spear at you.
|
| https://nosweatshakespeare.com/blog/shakespeare-puns/
| [deleted]
| blowski wrote:
| As a Dad of an 8 year old, I bond a lot with my son through
| humour. I need a repository of inoffensive jokes that don't
| require much understanding. That's why I tell Dad jokes.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Is it really only dads who can tell dad jokes?
|
| If you're _not_ a dad and tell a dad joke, then you 're a faux
| pa.
| fluctor wrote:
| I came to this thread for the Dad jokes.
| mmmpop wrote:
| Wow, just how long have you been hanging onto that one?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Maybe 2 or 3 years? It's just a bummer I heard it after
| becoming a dad, because I've had an unending love for bad
| humor as long as I can remember.
| Cerium wrote:
| I have enjoyed that one for a while. My wife and I are
| expecting that I will give up that joke in a few weeks for
| the same reason.
| quercusa wrote:
| Concise, on point, unexpected - a perfect specimen.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| At this point in the discussion, I'm in the perfect position to
| testify that this is a fantastic dad joke - but no wonder:
| after all, it comes from my parent.
| mkmk wrote:
| The best part of this joke is how the punchline slowly becomes
| a parent.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Where does a cat go after it exhausts its nine lives?
|
| Purr-gatory.
| adolph wrote:
| What do pirates put in their salad?
|
| Arrr-ugula!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That can't be a dad joke; it's rated Arrrr.
| m463 wrote:
| This thread has given me so much new material. (lol)
| zajio1am wrote:
| For me as a non-american, the concept od 'dad jokes' is totally
| alien. From perceived usage, it seems just as a different phrase
| for puns, with some negative association.
| lmkg wrote:
| It's a certain _type_ of pun. Not all puns are dad jokes. Dad
| jokes are viewed negatively because they tend to be one-beat,
| shallow puns. Ones that could be understood by a six-year-old,
| so when your dad is still telling them when you 're ten years
| old (or twenty), you roll your eyes.
| 87tau wrote:
| I too grew up outside the USA, I'd say in a culture very
| different from any western ones and not just America. We didn't
| have anything like dad-jokes as far as I can remember.
|
| Both my children (almost teens now) have only lived in the USA,
| and they yell "dad-joke" at any attempted humor that fails to
| make them laugh. On my part they're mostly sarcastic remarks
| veiled as a joke to keep the conversation pleasant or makes a
| fun one more interesting, by showing my participation.
| Sometimes I also initiate it because I simply want to bond with
| them but I don't know how to talk like their age. I don't want
| conversations to be too serious.
|
| I guess, my ultimate motive is to bond with them with humor but
| I have to choose ones that isn't too confrontational,
| aggressive or other negative connotations. I pick these almost
| silly bad ones on purpose because they're light-hearted, they
| have been used it since they were very small and I really don't
| feel the need to be perfect around them, they're too young for
| me. Lately I have also been thinking that maybe I do want them
| the opportunity to laugh at me, instead of seeing me as
| authoritative, all the time.
|
| In the culture I grew up in fathers were supposed to be quite
| strict so even talking to them was a big deal so jokes were
| rare. Even then we used talk about silly things our old men
| did, on rare ocassions in front of them so the last one might
| be a big part of it.
| brimble wrote:
| I'd never heard the term until a few years ago. They were just
| bad puns before that.
| lupire wrote:
| A bad pun is a good pun.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I entered many of my best dad jokes into a magazine
| contest. I was sure at least a couple would make the cut to
| be published but no pun in ten did.
| anbende wrote:
| > No longer distant, traditional patriarchal father figures, dads
| can use jokes to bond and interact with their children, using
| simple humor that is most often appreciated by children earlier
| on in their development.
|
| I think this is a big part of it, and I've heard this before.
| Parents use very simplistic humor with their kids, because more
| sophisticated humor or humor with adult themes isn't appropriate.
| Over time this becomes the habit for the parent, so they keep
| doing it even as the children age out of it.
| incomingpain wrote:
| I've heard all the dad jokes, I present you with this one:
|
| 1
| JakDrako wrote:
| Now I wish this site was Hacker Noose.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| A good joke is all about the execution.
| adolph wrote:
| Don't leave us hanging, what did you wish it was before now?
| plasticchris wrote:
| I'll add another one:
|
| 2
| biomcgary wrote:
| Even better than the first one, which was kind of odd.
| zappo2938 wrote:
| Your dad joke is wholesome
| incanus77 wrote:
| I knew I could count on HN.
| Tade0 wrote:
| As a father of a one year old I think a large component of all
| this is sleep deprivation.
| ineedasername wrote:
| These are also known as "Uncle Jokes".
|
| I guess moms & aunts either have different (better?) jokes, don't
| tell jokes, or tell these jokes too but haven't been singled out
| for it.
|
| Anyway, as a father I realized some time ago that I do in fact
| tell dad jokes. I think it has to do (for me at least) with
| wanting to make it fun to have my kids to think about something
| from an unexpected angle.
| klyrs wrote:
| Yeah, the article mentions that towards the bottom, with some
| generalization about women telling funny stories rather than
| "jokes". In my family, my mom was always the "straight man" and
| my dad, his sisters and her sister and mom all told terrible
| puns/jokes; where my uncles on his side were practically
| humorless. Gender tropes are weird.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| There's only two kinds of jokes in this world, kid: dad jokes,
| and bad jokes
| reaperducer wrote:
| If you like dad jokes, Siri is full of them, and they seem to be
| updated weekly or monthly.
|
| Just say, "Siri, tell me a joke." I do this four or five times
| before I go to bed.
|
| I don't know why. It's just a habit.
| adolph wrote:
| _What makes a thing funny? At its core, humor seems to be all
| about incongruity. Comic situations set up a context where
| something is marked or out of place. This oddness, far different
| to what we were led to expect or what we blithely assume is
| normal, is what makes things funny._
|
| [...]
|
| _Dad jokes play with incongruity largely through linguistics and
| wordplay, rather than subject matter. The much-maligned pun is a
| mainstay of the dad joke. Puns, bad or good, have long fascinated
| researchers for their playful ability to tell a micro mystery,
| with its red herring clues in plain sight. . . . Through a trick
| of linguistics, words cleverly disguised like other words because
| of the way they sound or their different semantic senses can lead
| us in the wrong direction of meaning resolution, before we "get
| it."_
|
| After recently making a dad-joke ("Why does the string section
| have so much security? Because of all the viol[ins|ence].") I
| started a project to map the CMUdict phonemes [0] by Levenshtein
| distance in order to gather more word sets that are not precisely
| homophones for more jokes. The "Dubious Art" article was a top
| read from my literature review.
|
| 0. https://github.com/cmusphinx/cmudict
|
| 1. https://blog.paperspace.com/measuring-text-similarity-
| using-...
| Tomte wrote:
| I like this explanation of the dad joke:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/25x850/the_new_fathe...
|
| Especially this: "I need to be careful about jokes that are
| biting or sarcastic humor. I don't want them to see me being mean
| to others."
| bradwood wrote:
| Yeah. Very funny. So, is AWS Eventbridge any good for event
| sourcing? ;)
| xwdv wrote:
| You know, I'm surprised the term "Dad Joke" has managed to
| survive this far in this day and age, and hasn't been replaced by
| the term "Parent Joke" or something.
|
| I'm surprised someone hasn't complained that the term "Dad Joke"
| somehow perpetuates the stereotype that women, and mothers,
| cannot be funny, or are regarded as funny as male peers.
| supertofu wrote:
| There's a lot more social pressure for men to be funny, which
| is why the "Dad Joke" concept exists at all.
| larsrc wrote:
| Calling them "dad jokes" strongly implies that it's the men who
| aren't funny.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Do we have to make the average middle-aged man into a buffoon to
| make up for our discomfort that a handful of older men have the
| unfair ability to boss us around? (e.g. Jeff Epstein, Jeff Bezos,
| Elon Musk?)
|
| (The reality that a group of less than 0.01% of the has so much
| power over the rest of us causes us to blame "the 1% percent" or
| "top 10%" or "the patriarchy", etc.)
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Interacting with my kids is a good opportunity to lighten up
| and be silly.
|
| I certainly can't wear my bosses pants on my head.
| bena wrote:
| I think I speak for a large majority of people here when I say:
|
| What?
| waynesonfire wrote:
| "unfair" ability? such victim mentality. lol, you're so
| entitled. and Musk was bossing you around before he whas
| middle-aged.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I dunno. 1000 years from now the last man will be breathing
| his last breath on Earth and will be thinking... We could
| have gotten to Mars, colonized Ceres, gotten to Alpha Centuri
| a long time ago, but Elon Musk just had to post that stupid
| tweet...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I'm really sorry to hear that a dead pedophile is bullying you.
| Is he haunting your dreams?
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Do we have to make the average middle-aged man into a buffoon
|
| I think we mostly do that to ourselves.
| [deleted]
| lupire wrote:
| The article seems to fail to distinguish between "dad jokes" and
| "jokes for kids".
|
| One of the main factors is that a "dad joke" is inserted in real
| conversation (Hi Hungry, I'm Dad", or an observational pun),
| whereas if it's set up as a fictional story ("at a funeral a man
| says 'May I offer you a word of comfort? Plethora'"), it's just a
| (kids) joke.
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(page generated 2022-04-21 23:01 UTC)