Standing around the (proverbial) water cooler someone told the old Tony Orlando joke:
Tony Orlando was missing all night but they finally found him at the crack of Dawn.
Some of us laughed but a couple of the women (40-ish), stared blankly and said, “Who’s Tony Orlando?”
(This thread isn’t meant to be about jokes rendered obsolete due to societal standards that have changed (too un-PC), but more because their cultural context has disappeared or technology has rendered the premise obsolete)
What jokes from your past wouldn’t work on Millennials or Gen Z?
Almost anything that relies on name recognition of obsolete celebs or obsolete products fits that bill. And as people are always aging and products have finite lifespans too, everyone and everything current becomes a forgotten antique soon enough.
I recall as a kid age 5 or 8 or something, so early-mid 1960s, our teacher (age 30-something?) eagerly told the joke about making a prank phone call to a drugstore and asking “Do you have Sir Walter Raleigh in a can?” And when they say “Yes” you respond “Well, let him out!!!” Ha ha ha.
The class was mystified. So she had to explain what pipe tobacco was. And that it came in cans or pouches. And that Sir Walter Raleigh was both a famous English politician we’d just learned something about, and also a then-current brand of pipe tobacco. Out of ~30 kids, most of our parents smoked cigs (1965 remember), but very few smoked pipes. Those had gone mostly out of style 10 years ago before we were born.
Fast forward back to today …
I bet most any John Wayne anecdote will sail over the heads of nearly anyone under 40 today.
30-ish years ago, “blonde jokes” were the rage for a while; they were definitely un-PC, and relied on the stereotype of blonde women as airheaded (and, sometimes, promiscuous as well).
But, one of the ones I remember also relies on a technology reference that’s been effectively obsolete for decades:
Q: How can you tell if a blonde has been using your computer?
A: There’s White-Out on the screen.
Polish jokes used to be popular. I’m not sure why, but all nations seem to have had another nation to make fun about. Some are timeless, but some depended on knowing Polish history.
Why wasn’t Christ born in Poland?
Because they couldn’t find three wisemen and a virgin.
Q: What do you get if you integrate around Europe?
A: Zero. Because there are no poles in Europe. Actually, there are some Poles in Europe, but they’re removable.
Here are two that would probalby not be understood today:
After the death of Kentuck Fried Chicken founder “Colonel” Harland Sanders in
1980 the joke that circulated around was “Did you hear what happed to Colonel
Sanders? He kicked the bucket.”
What’s the difference between Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor? Jackson got
burned by Pepsi and Pryor got burned by coke. (Jackson’s hair caught fire while
filming a Pepsi commercial and about the same time Pryor got badly burned while
freebasing cocaine.)
A photographer taking a group photo once asked Neil Armstrong to “take one small step forward”. This may be the greatest ad lib of all time, but I wonder how many people under 40 would get it.
Self-mockery by older comedians works on a younger crowd.
Basing that on the video clips I see on Facebook of a 70±aged comedian talking about the website he joined where the elderly can meet (“Carbon Dating”) and his comment to his colonoscopy team when they told him they’d see him back in ten years (“The hell you will”).
Polish jokes in America were originally about Polish immigrants, who arrived here later and were less familar with American customs than immmigrants from Italy, Ireland, etc. Hence the ‘dumb’ label. I’ve always suspected that those earlier immigrant groups were instrumental in creating and spreading Polish jokes.
In Europe, they tell Polish jokes. They don’t focus on stupidity, but on culture, history, and language.
Example:
A Pole goes to the eye doctor, who shows him a chart with the letters: C Z Y N Q S T A S Z. When asked if he can read it, the Pole replies, “Read it? I know the guy!”.
I’ve never stopped talking about Buckner because he was actually very rude to me in person once. Before the big error. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
