Well, I find nearly everything annoying, especially that fucking quarry, and am glad that the AOLers have finally stopped lording it over the '99ers, the '00ers, and even you newbies, though the process some of them used to stop it makes me sad. And I haven’t said, “Hi, Opal,” for too long. Hi, Opal. Miss ya. 
*Witty *snarky responses. A joke beaten into the ground the opposite of witty.
OK, so I’ve decided that you’ve just volunteered to be the explainer here.
You didn’t find it witty. Bravo. Your humour palate is obviously far more refined than mine. 
But why did you get annoyed?
I’m not Exapno Mapcase, but to me it’s simply that a joke that’s repeated over and over and over again, repeatedly, gets stale. In-joke or not. Surely you can understand that?
You seriously don’t comprehend how something that’s been repeated 8,000 times gets annoying?
If not, I suspect many people will want to hire you to babysit their toddlers.
Toddler asks, “Why?” ad infinitum.
You’ve giving *me *a chance to explain? Seriously? Have you ever read a post by me? Hell yeah, I’ll be the designated explainer. Stand back, everyone.
Have you ever been in a group of people? (That’s usually a rhetorical question, but, hey, I’m asking this of a Doper.) Jokes are extremely sensitive to group culture and response. A joke told by one member may not get the same laughter as if it were told by another. A joke told at one time may not get the same laughter as if were told at another time. A joke that’s been repeated too often may not get the same laughter as it did the first times or first few times.
Jokes are never in and of themselves independently funny in vacuo. They absorb funny via context (and skill in telling and many other things). A comedian can say something in the course of a set and get a laugh with a line that in any other context might be met with a nod or smile or utter indifference. The context of a message board post is the individual reader’s experience, both on and off the board. That’s why an in-joke falls flat to a newbie. Its reception by veteran posters will of course vary. Some will appreciate the acknowledgement of a shared culture and the pleasure that the joke has generated in the past. Others will believe that the joke has run its course and the teller is spewing hot air. Some jokes grow old very quickly, some last. If an appreciable percentage of the hearers all decide that the joke stopped being funny the likelihood that some or many of them will speak up against it grows exponentially, because that hurts the shared culture and depreciates its value.
So that’s why many people get annoyed at this joke, which in all probability those same many people didn’t think was all that funny to begin with. Because it wasn’t.
Now let me think about what I’m going to volunteer you to do. Anybody want to make suggestions?
A toddler asks why because they don’t understand the answer. It may get annoying, but it’s not contemptible. It just means you failed to explain the question in a way they could understand.
I still haven’t seen a sufficient answer to the question. Everyone continues to treat these “in jokes” as if they were funny. But that’s only true the first few times they are used. That isn’t why they continue and become a part of the culture. I guarantee no one was laughing at “Hi Opal” back in 2008 when I first got here, but that didn’t mean people didn’t use it. Not finding the joke funny cannot be the reason.
Simply getting tired of hearing it has a better chance of explaining the phenomenon, and may work sufficiently for memes that don’t last very long. But we have memes that are over a decade old. People (in general–individuals vary) didn’t get tired of them for over 10 years. But then they start getting tired of them now? There must be something other that repetition that causes the problem.
And, yes. I talk to people. I know it happens in real life. That doesn’t mean I understand why it happens. I can go with the flow like anyone else, but I still wonder the dynamics that lead to this shift.
Since no took me up on trying to explain it without calling the jokes “funny,” I’ll give it a shot: it’s not that the joke got tired. It’s that the entire context of the joke got tired. “Hi Opal” didn’t get more annoying, but Opal is gone now. That’s an external circumstance.
With the zombie issue, I think it actually is a changing attitude on the treatment of zombie threads that is behind the fact that the jokes are starting to feel old. It’s not the joke itself that gets old, but the context around it.
That’s my best guess. Does anyone have a better one?
To repeat a reply I made to you almost 11 years ago: cue your namesake putting his leg in your hand.
So backslapping it across the room is NOT the solution? But what if it’s someone else’s kid? :rolleyes:
Just a small aside, explaining or reasoning with a toddler rarely works. Someone has to do the dirty work and answer the whys/whens/wheres. Or change their focus.
Sounds easy, right? It’s not.
Sometimes it just means the toddler didn’t like the answer given, and is going to say “Why?” until they get the answer they want. Once you realize that no answer except, “Fine…whatever” will satisfy the toddler, a good parent just goes ahead and does the right thing and hopes that someday the toddler will be mature enough to understand.
Because I forgot to shake your medicine before I gave it to you.
I believe one factor involved in finding some in-joke memes annoying is the subconscious perception that they are often posted by people who lack wit. Posting in-joke memes is an easy avenue for witless people to appear witty (or so they think). Ipso facto, they are committing humor fraud.
Some stale in-joke memes may be funny if they are posted appropriately at certain spots in particular threads. However, it takes the talent of a witty poster to know when and where to post them.
If you’re generally a serious minded person but lack innate wit, stick to the serious stuff and don’t try to be funny. We enjoy your intelligent posts, but cringe at your jokes.
If you’re generally a funny person, but lack innate intelligence, stick to the funny stuff and don’t debate subjects you clearly don’t understand. We enjoy your jokes, but cringe at your attempts to be erudite.
If you lack both wit and intelligence, you should limit yourself to bringing coffee and donuts to the smart and funny posters.
Some precious few people excel in both wit and intelligence—Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, me and Stephen Hawking come to mind.