It was quite windy while the 767 I was on was landing at Newark Airport yesterday. We were close to completing our descent when a gust of wind knocked us down the last 20 yards or so, causing an unusually harsh landing. The woman next to me was pretty shocked immediately afterwards, so I decided to lighten the mood by offering a little humor. I said to her: “Do you think that was a normal landing, or were we shot down?” Ironically, I stole that joke from something I read years ago. But this lady proceeds to yell out: “I think we were shot down!”, drawing much laughter from some of our neighboring passengers.
Who the hell does this without at least disclosing that its not their joke?
I’m not saying that I oppose recycling jokes. If she used the joke on her next crash landing, I wouldn’t fault her a bit. Most jokes are recycled. And I admit that I’m not usually witty enough to make up something like that on the spot. But to basically take credit for a joke that someone just told you is pretty low.
Also, I neglected to state that the point of this thread was not to rant, but to hear other examples of this bizarre behavior.
My sister reckons that this behaviour is fair play - anyone is within their rights to ‘adopt, adapt and improve’ any joke they hear. It’s also about delivery - you obviously were only sharing the joke with her - she got way more laughs by delivering it to the whole plane. I’d say she won that one.
I remember sitting around a campfire once with my classmates and a professor, exchanging dirty jokes. I began one of my favorites. “Hey, did y’all know that elephants have their genitals on their feet?” I asked.
This hippie looked up and shouted, “Yeah! You’re fucked if you step on one!”
He not only stole my joke: he fucked it up. Man, was I pissed.
Well, I certainly don’t recommend making that joke (and I use that term lightly) on an airplane, but yes, I do hate it when people do this. Hey man, give credit where credit is due, I say! It’s like when George’s girlfriend handed Elaine the Big Salad… bitch, say something like, “Oh don’t thank me, George bought it.”! Don’t sit there and take credit for something I did right in front of me.
I’m not trying to be cocky here, but I am a pretty funny guy (or that’s what people tell me). I’m usually the one at the party who ends up in the center of the room with people laughing (yes, with, not at), so for better or worse it is important to me that people don’t take what I say and try to pass it off as their own.
If somebody wants to relay a joke they heard from someone else, how hard is it to say “A friend of mine once said…”. Especially, but not limited to, if the person being told the joke knows the original speaker.
That last sentence is probably the most gramatically incorrect thing on the SDMB, but I’m too tired to fix it, and you know what I mean anyway. Now stop stealing my jokes.
Yeah, but people are much nicer and well liked, as well as being very funny, if they don’t get upset when someone doesn’t acknowledge where they got the joke from.
My BF does this all the time. Not just jokes but trivia facts, news etc. I chalk it up mostly to his ADD and he forgets that I’m the one that told him. The funniest is when he says it to me and I tell him ‘Yes I know, I’m the one that told you that yesterday.’ Good times.
I had a friend in high school who used to do this all the time. We’d be at our table (4 of us) and some friends/acquaintances at tables around us during lunch. I’d day something funny to our table, and then she would say it louder so everyone else at the other tables could hear and they’d all laugh and say, "good joke! hah!’ etc. And you can’t say, ‘hey i just said that!’ cause you’d look like a jackass for caring.
But I cared. Isn’t taking credit for other people’s work plargarizing? Yep.
It doesn’t bother me. I tend to talk quietly, so the jokes I make are often not heard, and I hate to repeat a spur of the moment joke. When someone repeats it louder so everyone can hear it, I actually feel sort of vindicated, since my joke was clever enough to be repeated. They usually end up giving me credit anyway, although I wouldn’t really mind if they didn’t. I like to think that I am somehow making the world a happier place.
[accompanied by giggles from her, looks of puzzlement for everyone else]
"No, you see they’re in a bar!
[more giggling, more puzzlement]
“It’s a horse, you see. In a bar. And the bartender says that. When the horse asks for a drink…”
[sympathetic looks of bemusement all round]
And if I tell the same joke it goes like this:
Princhester: “So this horse walks into a ba…”
Mrs Princhester: “and he says ‘why the long face’” [collapsing into giggles]
Princhester “AAAAGH, why do you have to DO that when I’m telling a #%%$ joke?”
Thing is, she doesn’t mean to ruin my joke, or steal it. And she’s always apologetic. It’s just that her total lack of any understanding of what goes into telling a joke means that she just doesn’t really get why what she does ruins the joke.
I had a cousin who would recycle jokes from people and retell them the next time. We will all be sitting around saying, “Yup, it was funny when Richard told that one” or "“That was better than when Tommy said it.” Don’t people remember who told it to them?
I had a great joke which works well in both Japanese and English and told it to my ex-wife’s friend (back before the “ex” was added) who to it to her when I wasn’t around. The next time the three of us were together ex-wife then told me that this friend had a great joke and I should hear it from him. He started off tell me before I stopped him. Don’t people remember who told it to them?
