I make them because I love to see my daughter’s eyes roll back in her head.
Christmas Eve my son-in-law asked if I wanted some lefse.
“No”, I replied, “But I’ll have some rightsa.”
My Dad jokes have now graduated to granddad jokes.
I dunno; in the US, brrr-ritos are more likely to be wheaty than corny.
They’re going to be jokes with punchlines children can understand. Largely they’re simple puns. Often a question asked with a straight face so a child, or even an adult doesn’t realize it’s a joke until they hear the punchline. Dad jokes usually make children laugh, until they turn into teenagers and then sigh like Kip on Futurama. Younger children may enjoy hearing them over and over again just to have the opportunity to laugh.
If you tell enough dad jokes, they’ll never believe when you are telling the truth, which can be entertaining. Especially when money is on the line.
Is calling out “Hey!” whenever you see a hay truck on the road a dad joke?
Is a lump of hay outside a church Christian Bale?
On usages I’ve encountered (IRL and online), it seems there are (at least) three kinds of jokes that are sometimes labeled as “Dad jokes”: dumb puns (and other corny crap); and, what I see as smart jokes — often, they depend on a clever turn of phrase, and can sometimes require some knowledge of math, or language, or logic, etc.
Many of the latter type are a kind of joke that gained popularity a few years ago: taking some common English phrase, and adding a punch line that subverts the semantics (e.g., by taking its meaning literally). Jack Handey and Emo Phillips were progenitors of this type of joke, decades ago.
Perhaps there are two kinds of dads, each associated with one of these categories (dumb/corny vs. clever/semantic subversion).
I can see how some might find the latter category corny, as well.
Case in point:
I just finished writing my book on penguins.
My publisher said it would’ve been better if I’d written it on paper.
This 2 minute clip clears it up.
Dad jokes are nothing to laugh about.
The sandwich girl needs an award for what she says with her eyes.
Off camera: “And what did your dad say?”
Lol.
However, her attitude shows she was well-bred.
Keep em coming back for snores
Did you know Oliver Twist was a Cub Scout?
“Please, sir. I want s’mores?”
Certainly nothing as drawn out as a proper shaggy dog story, but the setup for a dad joke is often tortured and over-explained, in order for the pun to land.
But even then, it seems pretty dull. There is plenty of humorous material that is 100% clean and suitable for kids, but would be considerably funnier than the average dad joke.
Seasonal visual dad joke.
More moderating:
Hey my apologies, we cleaned up the rules a little while ago, and no longer say anything explicit about “just Google it”.
However, we do have a rule against “threadshitting”, which was the purpose of the injunction not to tell other posters, “just Google it”:
Threadshitting. Do not post in a thread for the sole purpose of disparaging the topic or the posters (“threadshitting”). If you want to have a discussion on a topic more to your liking, start a new thread.
Sorry to interrupt again with moderation.
My dad’s stock response to “Hey!” was always “Hay is for horses but oats taste better”.
That’s what she said!
What does a hall taste like?
You’re right there is such material. But did your Dad, or the neighbor’s Dad, know any of it? Part of the “charm” of Dad jokes is so many of them are self-made and reflect the humor of the Dad in question.
And let’s face it, very very few people, Dads or otherwise, are all that creatively funny or funnily creative. “The lame is strong in that one” would be a more apt description.
Hay is for horses
Water’s for lakes
God made you
We all make mistakes
I suspect this is part of the definition: jokes that a dad tells and retells till the kids roll their eyes, but said kids will then tell and retell the same jokes to their own kids.