I don’t mean jokes that you are offended by or don’t get, I mean jokes that surprise you with their popularity.
My most current example is the Go the F to Sleep phenomenon. I’m a parent and believe me, I get the whole holy-shit-would-you-just-go-to-sleep thing, but I just don’t find it all that clever. Yet everyone I know is obsessed with this thing and seem to find it amazingly hilarious.
Another example, though not a joke exactly, is the reaction to racy pictures, especially in the workplace. I have often been called over to check out some picture of a half-naked (never fully naked for some reason) sexy man on someone’s computer, and while I definitely appreciate hotness and am far from a prude (I know for a fact that my porn collection and some of my fetishes would absolutely shock these women) my lack of a loud and enthusiastic response always seems out of place, and I imagine they think afterwards, oh dear, the poor sweet thing, uncomfortable with nudity! It’s not that I have a problem with it in any way, it’s just that like with my other example, my reaction tends to be more of a yeah, that’s ok, so what?
What jokes or situations do you find yourself puzzled by the enthusiasm of others?
I can’t stand “comedy” that uses kids saying bad words, fake drinking, giving the finger or any other adult “blue” activity. I find it horrible and disturbing.
The “Dirtiest Joke in History”, which I last heard by Gilbert Godfried. The punchline is something along the lines of “what is the group’s name?” “The Aristocrats!”
This joke brings volumes of laughter that I cannot comprehend. I’ve had folks explain to me that the punchline isn’t the gag, it’s the journey to the punchline. The journey, I admit, has some humorous lines in it, but it is very locker room crude and it gets old after about 4 minutes. You can find any number of versions of this joke on youtube.com I refuse to link to any of them because I’ve wasted enough time trying to “get” the joke.
The whole “Uranus” thing. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I could name all the planets before I was five years old, while the word “anus” was never part of my vocabulary.
The point is, as the OP said, the journey. The punchline was originally intended to be humorous; that it is no longer considered particularly funny, per se, is due to the fact that we already know it. But I can see the humor in it.
It is the outrageous-ness of the telling of the joke - the lengths (and the depths) to which the joke teller will go - that we (sometimes) laugh at. The delivery has, over time, become the show.
The joke is certainly not everyone’s cup O tea, but I can see the funny.
mmm
The movie “There’s Something About Mary,” especially the running gag that the same band keeps turning up singing the title song. People were falling out of their chairs in the theater and I thought, “yeah, so?”
Skidmark jokes. All I can think of is people walking around with shit stuck to their underwear. Not stuck, but due to relentless lazy hygiene, ingrained forever in the fabric… to be washed with other clothes in a shit stew.
I know a woman who has a seemingly incompetent doctor as well as other professionals in her life, and she’s always regaling people with “hilarious” tales of his latest screwup and “You can’t believe what happened this time, ha ha, if I don’t laugh I’ll cry, etc. etc.” And I tell her, “You know, I don’t think that’s funny. You can choose a doctor who doesn’t suck. One day your life could depend on having a competent doctor.” And then she finds someone else to entertain with her story and they give her the sympathetic laugh she was after. I get that there are situations you can’t help, or relationships you have to just grit your teeth and deal with, so might as well find the humor in it, but this is not that situation. “Ha ha, what can you do?” You can DITCH HIM.
Fake winning lottery tickets. That’s not a funny thing to do to your friends, really. What if they are, unknown to you, in dire financial straights? Torturing your friends is not cool in my book.
Toys that give you a mild electrical jolt. Read the fine print ‘can cause death’ to people with undiagnosed heart conditions. Who wants to realize their friend must have had a heart condition while they’re lying dead on your livingroom floor? All for a cheap gag, no thanks.
Punked. Sorry, it’s not funny for me, it’s obnoxious. Likewise Jackass. I see the appeal to the less mature, but it’s not for me.
Men dressed as women. The Brit’s never, ever, seem to tire of this. For me it was funny in 7th grade, and not since.
The, ‘blowing your drink’, through your mouth or nose. Again, it was amusing as a child, but now that I’m an adult I find it trite.
The three stooges. Yeah, I know I’m in the minority, but I found them offensive to my intelligence when I was 7. Whatever floats your boat, but these leave me scratching my head cause I’m just not seeing it.
I like my humour less slapstick and, well, actually funny, y’know?
Put me in the same group of folks who are tired of blue comedy.
Don’t get me wrong, I cursed like a sailor for years (I was a sailor in fact), and still do color the air blue inside my car from time to time while in traffic.
But I get tired of hearing comedians going down the low road for their laughs.
Doubly so for the legions of black comedians who make all of those “this is how white people talk” jokes. Tired.
ETA: Forgot my other main beef: anything that involves people getting hurt. I love good Fail Blog stuff, but when I see someone getting hurt it isn’t funny. If I see a kid getting hurt, I rate the post as low as I can. For example, I remember them showing a video of a 12yo girl sledding and then crashing painfully into a dumpster or something like that. What is funny about watching a child get hurt?
As I understand it, this joke is not intended for public consumption. It is actually a joke told by comedians for other comedians to hear.
This is their inside joke that they use to show one another up in private.
And that’s fine enough for me—it’s not my cup of tea either.
I dislike jokes that have to do with the subject being hurt- like “Ow my balls!” from Idiocracy and poor Roger in the opening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I always just wind up feeling incredibly bad for the person.
I enjoyed “The Aristocrats” mostly because it was an interesting look at the inside world of comedy and comedians, and not really because it was a hilarious laff-a-minute jokefest.
Puns. I can sort of intellectually appreciate a good one, as in, “Oh, that was clever,” but they just aren’t funny for me. At all.
