There used to be a joke circuit at work. A bunch of us would make the circuit several times a week and relay the latest and greatest, polishing the presentation with each stop.
Then came the internet and the plethora of jokes sites, pages, lists, and features. Many of those get emailed to the masses in such dosages that it’s hard to find many all that new or refreshing. My joke buddies have just about quit sending them.
Be that as it may, I’m curious if there are enough joke fans here to build a list of the fads and phases that jokes have been through.
In no attempt at chronological order I can start with:
Little Moron jokes
Little Johnny jokes
Elephant jokes
Sick jokes
Gross jokes
Knock knock jokes
“pick your ethnic group” jokes
Priest or nun jokes
Redneck jokes
A guy goes into a bar jokes
A guy goes to a whorehouse jokes
Old folks jokes
Doctor or nurse jokes
Musician jokes
Politician jokes
Lawyer jokes
Shaggy dog (pun) “jokes”
Gay jokes
Sacrilegious jokes
Yo Mama jokes
Hell, just add to the list, and if you have “the perfect specimen” go ahead and tell it.
Maybe I’m getting too specific here, but I remember the following, basically all of which are offensive (sorry):
Dead baby jokes
JAP (Jewish American Princess) jokes
Helen Keller jokes
“guy with no arms and legs” jokes (I can’t remember any, but basically they all started out “What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who…”)
Blonde jokes. (“How do you make a blonde’s eyes light up?” “Shine a flashlight in her ear” is one of the nicer)
As well as the “guy with no arms or legs” jokes that TeaRoses mentioned, overlapping with them there were more general “What do you call a guy…?” jokes, each one depending on a pun on the name. Like “What do you call a guy with a seagull on his head?” “Cliff.”
I remember from my boyhood mid-1980s a series of very sick Ethiopian famine jokes, and jokes about the Challenger disaster. The Michael Jackson child abuse scandal produced a lot of bad-taste occasional jokes as well.
“You know you’ve been xxxing too long” jokes applied to a wide variety of geek pursuits.
Classical musicians tell viola jokes, and rock musicians tell drummer jokes (e.g. “How do you tell when there’s a drummer at the door?” “The knocking speeds up” or “He doesn’t know when to come in”) These aren’t really fads, since the talentlessness of viola players and drummers is immutable
