# What was the worst joke you ever heard in your life? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 30, 2019, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258 "2019-04-30T10:26:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/101 "2019-05-04T22:31:36Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > These aren’t bad jokes. They’re awful, wince-inducing jokes, but not in the sense that I understood the OP to have intended — completely unfunny jokes. > > I was one of many simultaneous victims of someone who thought it would be entertaining to tell the original classic shaggy dog story. That’s 45 minutes of my life I still want back. It’s not funny; that’s the “joke”, i.e., “hey, I had you hanging on every word for the better part of an hour thinking this was going to be a great joke, and it’s not, ha ha ha!” > > (In the version I was subjected to, the “punchline” was “That’s not the shaggiest dog we’ve ever seen, so we’ll give it 2nd prize”) Reminds me of the joke that ends with the line Fuck you, clown! ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2019, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/102 "2019-05-04T22:59:28Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Your suppositions about my ability to understand the second joke are completely off the mark. If I point out that this is the punchline, I am emphasizing the last of the joke’s funniness, not my slowness in comprehending it. > > As for the first, I don’t need to look in the dictionary. I know that meaning of “fast”. I knew it when I was a kid, and my sister first told me that. The problem is that it doesn’t, in my mind “work” at all as a joke. > > “How do you make a slow horse fast” > > “Tie it to a post” > > No, just because I can make the construction “tie it fast” doesn’t make that a joke. You wouldn’t ordinarily do it. The construction that tying the horse to a post so it can’t eat makes it “fast” follows better both logically and grammatically. The idea that you can tie something “fast” does not. At all. Lighten up, man—you’re way too serious. It’s just a joke. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/103 "2019-05-05T00:06:33Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > Well, there were all the dead baby jokes I learned when I was a teenager. Maybe it was just the callous taboo nature of those jokes that was the appeal. For example: > > What’s red and swings? > A baby on a meat hook. > > What’s green and swings? > Same baby two weeks later. > > Horrible, I know. What’s the difference between a truck-load of bowling balls and a truck-load of dead babies? You can’t unload the truck-load of bowling balls with a pitch-fork. ---
**Author:** ![Haldurson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/51bf81/32.png) [@Haldurson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haldurson)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/104 "2019-05-05T02:11:22Z")
There was this one joke that we used to tell as kids: An elephant and a giraffe were in the shower, and Giraffe says “Can you pass the soap”, and the Elephant says “No soap, radio”. The whole point of the joke (For those who were in on it) is that there is no point to the joke. What you do is you tell the joke, and your buddies who are all in on it, laugh as if it’s the most hysterical thing ever, so that anyone who doesn’t ‘get it’ (well, there’s nothing to get) feel foolish. ---
**Author:** ![Haldurson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/51bf81/32.png) [@Haldurson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haldurson)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/105 "2019-05-05T02:17:02Z")
Also, I had this friend who used to tell the dumbest and longest shaggy dog stories. There was one that starts with a guy going to see a guru and asking “What’s the secret of life?”, and the Guru says “Well I’m not allowed to tell you because you are not a monk”, and the guy asks well, “How can I become a Monk”, and so the gury says that he needs to climb this really tall mountain and fast and mediate for a whole week and then come down. And he comes down and then the guru gives him another equally innane task and this goes on for 20 minutes, and finally the guy realizes from all those tasks that he knows what the secret of life is. And do you want to know what it is?" And then of course the people who’ve been listening to this vast waste of time say “YES Tell us!”, and your response is “I can’t tell you because you are not a monk”. And that’s the whole damned joke boiled down from 45 minutes to 2 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Haldurson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/51bf81/32.png) [@Haldurson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haldurson)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/106 "2019-05-05T02:24:34Z")
Something I told my brother… my mom was picking me up at the opthamologist and I told my mom (with my little brother sitting in the car) that the doctor gave me eye exercised, and my brother quite seriously asked me what kind of exercises. Without missing a beat, I replied ‘Push Ups’, and my brother’s eyes got really wide. What actually made me think of that at the time was a Mad MAgazine cartoon that literally showed someone doing push ups with his eye balls. Well, it was funny at the time. BTW, it turned out that that Opthamologist was a quack, but that’s another story altogether. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/107 "2019-05-05T03:41:27Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > What’s the difference between a truck-load of bowling balls and a truck-load of dead babies? > > You can’t unload the truck-load of bowling balls with a pitch-fork. That’s the spirit! Another variation: what’s easier to unload, a truckload of manure or a truckload of dead babies? A truckload of manure, because the pitchfork gets stuck in the babies. These jokes were in terrible taste, but I still remember them 40 years later. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/108 "2019-05-05T12:16:46Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > Reminds me of the joke that ends with the line Fuck you, clown! I first read this post as “Remind me…”; and was about to set down said joke on-screen – then I looked again – so, thread participants are mercifully spared. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/109 "2019-05-05T15:27:01Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > That’s the spirit! Another variation: what’s easier to unload, a truckload of manure or a truckload of dead babies? A truckload of manure, because the pitchfork gets stuck in the babies. > > These jokes were in terrible taste, but I still remember them 40 years later. How about 50 years later– There was a version with a visual aspect to it (the faint of heart are advised to move along, pronto): How do you tell if a truck-load of dead babies might have a live one mixed in somewhere? (Mime using a pitch-fork) _STAB_ “Dead;” _STAB_ “Dead;” _STAB_ (flail around a bit, holding the ‘pitch-fork’) “Dead.” (Nope, no live ones here.) ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/110 "2019-05-05T15:54:08Z")
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/111 "2019-05-05T16:38:02Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > I first read this post as “Remind me…”; and was about to set down said joke on-screen – then I looked again – so, thread participants are mercifully spared. I believe it was known as the Clown Joke, where a guy seeks revenge on a clown that traumatized him as a young boy. It goes something like this (with variations of course): [Reddit - Dive into anything](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/3wmv58/the_clown_joke_warning_very_long/) ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2019, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/112 "2019-05-05T20:18:30Z")
Do you know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/113 "2019-05-06T01:36:31Z")
This I learned from a mortician: What did one coffin say to the other coffin? Is that you, coffin? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/114 "2019-05-06T02:03:21Z")
What did one toilet say to the other? Do I look flushed? ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/115 "2019-05-06T02:03:41Z")
Bo Diddley recorded albums such as _Bo Diddley as Gunslinger_, _Bo Diddley Is a Lover_ and \*Bo Diddley’s a Twister \*. If he recorded an album of Michael Jackson covers, what would it be called? ``` [spoiler]Bo Diddley as A Boy Diddler[/spoiler] ``` ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/116 "2019-05-06T03:25:16Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > That you had to reach back to the 19th century for those examples is significant. Yeah, it’s significant of the fact that _Q. “How do you make a slow horse fast?” A. “Tie it to a post.”_ is an old joke, as [this 1912 published version of it](https://books.google.com/books?id=66ztAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA412) illustrates. There’s no shame in your not initially understanding a joke that depends on an idiom that was old-fashioned well before you were born, but that doesn’t make your alternative interpretation of it correct. If it’s any comfort, though, there does also exist an equally venerable variant of the joke in the form _Q. “How do you make a slow horse fast?” A. “Don’t feed him.”_, as in [this 1902 example](https://books.google.com/books?id=Youae3Um3EcC&pg=PA31). ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/117 "2019-05-06T07:26:20Z")
This would seem rather to bring us to the supposed oldest joke in the world, as in millennia old: one feels – on the weak side, and definitely unkind. A: I keep trying to train my horses to live without food: but every time, just as the project is about to succeed, it goes completely wrong. B: Why? What happens? A: They all die ! ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/118 "2019-05-06T07:32:34Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > I believe it was known as the Clown Joke, where a guy seeks revenge on a clown that traumatized him as a young boy. It goes something like this (with variations of course): > > [Reddit - Dive into anything](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/3wmv58/the_clown_joke_warning_very_long/) I thought my version was shaggy-doggy: but it’s a super-brief anecdote, compared to the monstrosity linked to above ! ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/119 "2019-05-06T14:06:10Z")
A man goes to a nursing home to meet his fiancee’s grandmother. While there, he is eating some peanuts from a dish in the room. As they are leaving, gradma says: I wish they made those chocolates without peanuts. I have false teeth and can’t eat nuts, so I have to buy the chocolate with the nuts, suck the chocolate off and then put the nuts in that dish. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258/120 "2019-05-06T14:14:13Z")
Fred (Mr) Rogers last words: Couldn’t you be wouldn’t you be won’t you be my undertaker. And not being a Penn State fan I actually enjoyed: You know why they named it Beaver Stadium? If they had named it Bending Little Boys Over in the Shower Stadium even Joe Pa would have had to admit something was wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-worst-joke-you-ever-heard-in-your-life/833258.md?page=7)