No one walks into a bar.

March 8, 2022 6:42 PM

In 2022: Do you still tell jokes? Does anyone tell you jokes?

By a"joke," i specifically mean "a little story with a humorous punchline." I don't mean ironic or witty commentary about people or events, or other forms of verbal humor. I mean this specific genre, "the joke," the kind comprising a little story with a punchline. For my purposes, interactive jokes (riddles, knock-knock jokes) DO count. But for this question I am asking about a verbal performance with a punchline, probably NOT improvised (that is, the teller already knows the structure of the story and how it will end before telling it), probably pre-circulated (i.e., you heard the joke somewhere else and are repeating it, even if you add improvised elements or change it in big or small ways ).
Being a stand-up comic, or telling jokes at an open-mic comedy club ,also does not count for this question. I am interested in whether you tell, or or are told, jokes in everyday settings.
Bonus: tell me if you think people *used to* tell jokes this way more than they do now and if so, speculate why.

posted by nantucket to Writing & Language (50 answers total)

I definitely used to tell this kind of joke, and I definitely don't anymore, partly because nobody tells me jokes so I never learn new ones.

I feel like what I do instead is share memes, but I'm not sure that's the whole explanation.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:56 PM on March 8, 2022 [9 favorites]

I can't remember the last time someone told me a joke. I occasionally see people online (not comedians) tell jokes, but it seems like it's mostly people filming heir dads telling "dad jokes".

My guess is that there are a few reasons behind why people don't tell jokes the way they used to, but I assume that the main reason is that a lot of jokes are based around ethnic/religious/gender stereotypes, and those things have a much smaller potential willing listenership than they did years ago.

Aside form that, although I think stand-up comedy is still popular, up until a couple of decades ago, comedians were releasing albums, and those albums were hugely popular (as were the tours where those records were recorded). So I think there used to be a lot more comedians who were "household names" and that probably inspired people to tell more jokes.
posted by jonathanhughes at 6:59 PM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

I only tell jokes and hear jokes from the kids in my life. From adults it’s mostly just the occasional surprising pun.
posted by donut_princess at 7:00 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Once in a great while you'll hear an actual joke, but not very often. My dad used to tell them at times, but he's long gone.

The last time I heard any was from a guy I'm in a show with:

"Hi, my name is (redacted) and I'm an alcoholic."
"This is AAA."
"I know, I'm explaining the situation."
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:03 PM on March 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: I only tell jokes and hear jokes from the kids in my life. From adults it’s mostly just the occasional surprising pun.

I didn't know that kids still told jokes, & I'm curious whether these seem to be the same kinds of jokes that kids told in previous generations.
posted by nantucket at 7:04 PM on March 8, 2022

My childhood mentor still tells those kind of jokes. Roughly half the times we talk. He's a guy is in his late 60s in the US.
posted by eotvos at 7:05 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

100% people used to tell the kinds of jokes you’re talking about more, but now they tell them less, because of the Internet. Say what you will about the Internet, and especially about Twitter, but OH MY GOD are the jokes good. It’s basically a joke-making machine. “You’re telling me a shrimp fried this rice?” PERFECT JOKE. Perfect. And ten thousand riffs on it, some funny and adding to the original, others basically just retellings. The reason people don’t repeat, verbatim, jokes they’ve heard before is that they don’t need to—but they do forward memes, retweet, etc. it’s still joke telling, but in a new—and honestly much improved—form.
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 7:06 PM on March 8, 2022 [22 favorites]

My dad still tells those types of longer jokes (and also dad jokes but also not dad jokes). Honestly I just haven’t really been at parties in the last two years which is where I think these would most often come up.

What’s brown and sticky?
A stick
posted by raccoon409 at 7:11 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

My husband literally just walked in the room and told me a joke like this like 3 minutes ago. I have not noticed any differences in joke frequency in my life.
posted by brainmouse at 7:13 PM on March 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

Oh and this:

I didn't know that kids still told jokes,

Kids are 100% still telling jokes, and in many cases they are the same ones I learned 30+ years ago.
posted by brainmouse at 7:15 PM on March 8, 2022 [14 favorites]

I tell jokes! Probably about 3 times a week I will tell a one. It’s because I’m not very funny, but if I tell a joke, people will usually laugh, even if they are laughing at the fact that my joke was bad. I love a dumb joke.
posted by assenav at 7:16 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Gen Xer here. I still tell jokes and love it. I don’t hear jokes as much anymore, but I subscribe to r/Jokes on Reddit so it feels like I do. I briefly worked with a millennial who loved telling very simple, wholesome jokes (“What do you call an alligator wearing a vest? An investigator”) which resulted in every work Zoom call starting with a joke exchange.

Say what you will about the Internet, and especially about Twitter, but OH MY GOD are the jokes good.

I truly believe the three greatest American cultural contributions are jazz, musical theater, and Twitter humor.
posted by ejs at 7:17 PM on March 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

I tell jokes, but telling real jokes is rare. Kids These Days definitely tend to repeat memes instead of telling jokes. Like I actually had to teach some children about knock knock jokes. Knock knock jokes! The second-lowest form of comedy!
posted by betweenthebars at 7:22 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

The kids in my life still tell similar jokes to when I was a kid (90s). Some are literally the same, some are new, some don’t really make sense because they are figuring it out/making it up, but still a joke in the same way. For reference they are all around 7 years old.
posted by sillysally at 7:25 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Brilliant question.

I think I really only hear jokes mentioned as illustrations within a news story (as in "the joke going round x location," e.g. years ago I read "The head of FIFA and the head of the IOC are in a car. Who is driving?" Answer: "The police") or less often in work settings to illustrate a point (in library school, a teacher asked what subject code would you use for a book called "How to hold up a bank" and the answer was irrigation management - although maybe that is just a pun and not really a joke?).

But yes I agree, I don't hear people tell jokes. About 25 years ago I was walking along Sherbourne and Dundas in Toronto, two senior citizen guys were leaning against the fence, and one was chuckling and said, that's a good one, did you hear the one about and by that point I was out of ear shot. And I remember at the time wondering when the last time I'd heard someone tell jokes (except children, as others have mentioned).
posted by philfromhavelock at 7:26 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Last time I heard a joke was yesterday, as a lab tech stole my blood. (Her joke: Did you hear about the cowboy who adopted a dachshund? He just wanted to get a long, little doggy.)

Aside from that, my wife loves to open meetings with jokes, and she tests them on me.
posted by whisk(e)y neat at 7:27 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

A friend’s son told me a joke that I think was from a joke-a-day type website about four or five years ago:

How do you smash ham?
With a hammer.

So yeah, at least one kid is still telling jokes.

I love jokes. Also, for shorthand, a nonzero number of standup comics call the kind of jokes you’re looking for “street jokes.”
posted by Mister Moofoo at 7:27 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I have a handful of jokes I consider very good; not lame jokes or dad jokes or groaners, but actually funny jokes that have some degree of cleverness and sophistication.

I'll repeat each of those any chance it seems relevant, and they do come up when discussing math and science and history etc. But I don't hear good jokes very often, or really ever add to the list. Because most jokes qua jokes are pretty juvenile: fun enough, but I've had my full and so have lots of others.

And on the odd occasion people are actually sharing jokes for a while, I'll often have a chance to add the classic "there's nothing like a good joke... and that was nothing like a good joke."
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:03 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also, I remember reading a comment here at metafilter years ago that someone said IIRC in the middle of a job interview, after a few regular questions, the interviewer threw out "Tell us a joke."

IIRC it was for a position that was forward facing that called for a bit of breaking the ice - sort of like the situation that whisk(e)yneat describes, above. As a question, it was brilliant (albeit frightening - a colleague went visibly pale when I told that story) tactic that would weed out people who told jokes that were mean (sexist, punching down, etc.), too esoteric, too long, etc.
posted by philfromhavelock at 8:18 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

The men over 60 in my office tell Jokes. Nobody else in my world does.
posted by kapers at 8:19 PM on March 8, 2022

it's mostly people filming their dads telling "dad jokes"

I'm a dad and just told my kids the one with the punchline, "The dog says, 'So, maybe I shoulda said DiMaggio?" Their response, "Who's DiMaggio?" (Can't blame them, considering he retired 60 years before they were born.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:29 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I definitely still tell jokes. You couldn't stop me. I have a repertoire of Jewish jokes that make my family laugh ("but all we do is argue about the tradition!" "Ah-hah! That, my son, is the tradition.") And physicist jokes that make my coworkers laugh ("looks at the fire, and the extinguisher, declares "a solution exists!" And goes back to sleep"), and really terrible puns that make my partner groan and put his head in his hands (no examples, they aren't terrible enough unless you have at least two minutes of setup). You have to be together and relaxed, and a drink doesn't hurt.
posted by Lady Li at 8:45 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think the last best humor thing I came across I came across (and posted in a free thread comment) was this thing: A comedian and three AI/Consciousness researchers discuss humor for 2 and a half hours. YMMV, I chortled quite a bit.

I have a few long jokes just waiting for the right Metatalktail Hour opening. Most people I know aren't joke tellers in the first place. 52yr old, mostly stopped joking around mid-20's except for the occasional messing with kids sort of dad joke.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:10 PM on March 8, 2022

I don't hear jokes anymore. But then, I just begged to run an errand for my wife because I haven't left the house for three days now because WFH. Really the only place I have heard jokes (60 yo male) in the past few decades is at work and that got stolen from me, so here I am jokeless.
posted by dg at 9:37 PM on March 8, 2022

Last summer I was visiting friends in the mountains where there had been bear activity. Their daughter mentioned that she had seen bear scat (poop) that morning. I asked her if she knew the difference between black bear scat and grizzly bear scat?
Black bear scat has little bits of sticks and berries in it, and grizzly bear scat has little bells and smells like pepper spray.
I love that joke. High humor in Colorado where the hiking shops sell bear spray and little bells to tie on your backpack so the bears will hear you coming.
I am over 60 and I was so happy to have such a good lead in.
I'm saddened to think that people don't tell jokes anymore.
posted by BoscosMom at 9:41 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

For what it's worth, the story-jokes from /r/Jokes on the Reddit front page usually reek with that old man smell (so many blondes and "co-eds" and Irish Catholics saying "begorrah" and virgins on their wedding nights), or they're dad jokes, or little-kid wordplay. They seldom sound like they come from the actual lived experience and perceptions of modern millennials who actually use Reddit.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:44 PM on March 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

I’m a middle school teacher in my early 40s and I tell this kind of joke to my kids pretty frequently (like: get ready within X amount of time and I will tell you an amazing joke). They roll their eyes but are also very likely to come up with one over time for me to use the next time, I think they secretly like it.

Last year on the only semi-normal school day we had all year, a fully-masked field day at the end of the year, I was walking around a track with some of my 7th graders and got to tell my favorite one. I noticed a flock of geese arriving and I pointed and said, “Violet? Did you know that in a flock like that, one side of the V is always longer than the other?” She said “I didn’t.” I asked her if she knew why, she said no, and I got to say, as I have dreamed about half my life, “Well, there’s more birds on that side.”
posted by charmedimsure at 10:20 PM on March 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

I might tell jokes if I could remember them, but I’ll probably never know, because when a joke is funny enough to make me really laugh, the laughter makes me forget the joke. Kundera wasn’t joking when he (his translator, at least) called his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

It feels like a reflex.
posted by jamjam at 11:06 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

I tell jokes, if I remember them.

Last time I told a joke it was to a co-worker last Friday (to be fair, it fell completely flat because there was the joke assumed historical knowledge that they did not possess. Awkward in a text chat...).
posted by pompomtom at 3:28 AM on March 9, 2022

Yes, I (M, GenX) tell jokes, often at work and often to my (long-suffering) spouse.

I think people used to tell jokes more often, but that they have waned for many reasons, some mentioned above:

* There are more varieties of humor that are more easily and more quickly shared now than there were pre-Web. The almost-vanished Xerox jokes are a good example -- they were easy enough to copy and pass around, but easier than a tweet or meme? I don't think so.

* Much U.S. humor, well up to and into the 2000s, was racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, or similarly "punching down." I'd add "ethnocentric" to that mix, but I think those jokes fell off in much of the country pre-2000 along with a meaningful sense of ethnic identity for many white people.

* "Traveling salesman" jokes waned along with the passing of traveling salesmen... and the rise of mass media. There's a good bit about that in Mrs. Maisel, where Joel's telling jokes at the Gaslight... that he heard on TV -- just like everyone else. Laughing about how they do things over in Spratleyburg just got to be less funny.

* With the waning of many jokes' viability, many of the remaining jokes have been sidelined by fundamentally ageist sentiments. They're either "for children" or "for the elderly" or "for dads."

* I will further speculate that jokes waned in the same way that popular performing arts waned because there is now, at all times, a reasonable sampling of people doing X dance or singing X song on DVD, YouTube, etc. There's always someone out there who's done it better, and whose performance can be easily viewed. Modestly talented professionals and talented amateurs have been sidelined by "better" versions, and by the pressure to perform at that level.

* And, more generally, humor changes over time.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:02 AM on March 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I have a text file where I periodically update with any good 'dad jokes' I might find. Some of them are little stories, although most are word-play and one-liners. There are times when reeling out ten jokes one after another can be a bit of fun. Mine are all at the level of "What do you call a fly with no legs? / A walk" and "I got a job at Old Macdonald's farm. I'm the CIEIO". I use them with kids that I coach at sport. I kind of lean in to the 'tells rotten jokes' thing, because why not?

I think as kids we had joke books, and I can remember exchanging jokes with my friends. It was never a big part of our lives, but as an adult (if you're me) your tastes in humour become more Stewart Lee, and less Bob Monkhouse, so those silly jokes get forgotten.
posted by pipeski at 4:27 AM on March 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I love jokes. And that's part of why I love tiktok... surprised it hasn't been mentioned already! I mean, I'm sure most of them are from Twitter, but I'm not on Twitter, so they're new to me!
posted by Grither at 5:03 AM on March 9, 2022

I tell MANY MANY jokes. Finding one that makes my husband belly-laugh is one of the pleasures of my life. My family deeply loves bad puns and all sorts of wordplay.

I think the reason you don't "hear" them as much is that many are shared over text, or over the dinner table. Especially during the pandemic, behavior the public sphere has changed so much that there are less opportunities to be around jokesters. Telling a joke in a mask is hard.
posted by nkknkk at 6:30 AM on March 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

I still tell jokes, several a day. I have a weekly pun/joke on the whiteboard outside my work area.

This week's joke? How does a non-binary samurai kill their enemies? They slash them.
posted by schyler523 at 6:32 AM on March 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's my observation that a lot of -ist(racist, sexist, ageist, ableist, etc.) jokes serve the purpose of gauging the level of -ism the joke teller can get away with.

I also think that 'humor' right now has gotten really mean. Not-mean jokes are really great.
posted by theora55 at 8:16 AM on March 9, 2022

I think I hear fewer jokes of the "story with a punchline" sort because my tolerance for uncreative monologues from guys who aren't nearly as funny as they think they are* has gotten a lot lower over the years.

There are so many better ways to be funny while engaging with each other and with the world around you, just repeating a story with a funny ending doesn't really cut it anymore. The closest thing I regularly pay attention to would be Stephen Colbert/Trevor Noah/SNL Weekend Update, and those are still more commentary than punchline.

* and it's pretty much always guys.
posted by yeahlikethat at 8:58 AM on March 9, 2022

I am interested in whether you tell, or or are told, jokes in everyday settings.

I am a 53 year old woman who loooooves jokes. I am not a stand-up but I do sometimes do public speaking in my work and while I'm not the "open with a joke" kind of person I do sometimes put jokes in my talks. My partner is a reformed-class-clown who also sometimes tells jokes although we've been together so long that I know all his and he knows all mine so we'll only share jokes if we heard them somewhere. Any time I hang out with kids under about 12 there is usually a joke-telling aspect to part of our conversation because 1. kids know jokes and 2. it's more fun than "So how's school?" I bring joke books when I go to visit friends with young kids, am always stocking up on them in the thrift store.

And x2 to what Grither says, SO MANY JOKES on social media, Twitter especially.
posted by jessamyn at 10:19 AM on March 9, 2022

I love jokes, and when I hear a good one I will tell it to anyone who will listen, because a joke that is not mean, not *-ist, and actually funny puts joy into the world and heaven knows we need more of that.

Earlier this week my 14yo was surfing the web and discovered a species of antelope that can jump higher than the average house. They have really strong back legs, and also the average house can't jump.
posted by spamloaf at 12:23 PM on March 9, 2022 [4 favorites]

I adore, treasure and hoard a certain kind of concise joke which involves clever or surreal wordplay with no, or only completely incidental, vulgarity involved.

I don't come across them that often - maybe 6, up to 10 in a good year - but when I do, it gives me enormous pleasure to keep them to myself until I can work them into an appropriate conversational context (in person or writing remotely) with my nearest and dearest friends and relations.

Yes you could call them victims, yes you could call them dad jokes. I care not :)

Several of them reciprocate ; on occasion the punchline is deliberately withheld so that the whole thing acts like a cryptic crossword clue, and the groan joy can be extended as long as possible.

The crowning glory is if the same wordplay can be worked into multiple repeats performances with months in between.

Most recently :

Did you hear about the lab technician who wasn't sure whether they believed in God or not ... ?

They decided to roll a numbered cube to determine the answer.
posted by protorp at 12:37 PM on March 9, 2022

My daughter, 11, is an avid consumer of joke books. When friends & relatives gather, she will read jokes to them, and then some of them retaliate with jokes of their own. I can also report that the kids' magazines of today always have a page of jokes, just like they did in 1980.
posted by polecat at 2:33 PM on March 9, 2022

Best answer: We still tell jokes, generally when we eat meals together. Usually if one person tells a joke, then everyone else will start telling them - it just takes that one person to get it started.

Plus at this point everyone knows how much I love elephant jokes and sadistic talking animal jokes, so I think they save them up for me.
posted by Mchelly at 7:52 AM on March 10, 2022

Response by poster: I learned a lot from this thread!! Mchelly's is marked best answer bc the linked post showed me there is a world of jokes being told on Askme. And the plasterer elephant made me laugh out loud. I'm so glad to learn that we are now living with an abundance of memes, twitter jokes and old fashioned "story jokes" -- we all need a laugh these days, no? Thanks to everyone for responding.
posted by nantucket at 8:03 AM on March 10, 2022

Their response, "Who's DiMaggio?" (Can't blame them, considering he retired 60 years before they were born.)

I get around that by making the last question before the agent throws them out, "What's on top of a house?" and as they walk out the dog says, "Maybe I should have said ceiling". Which in addition to not having to mention a now-unfamiliar sports figure, "ceiling" is a funny word in itself.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:02 AM on March 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

Now that I think about it, my mother also tells jokes quite a lot today. Pretty much every time I visit, and presumably to other people too.

Sadly, almost always racist ones. Usually prefaced with "I heard this from a Mexican." She'll do it while sitting in a mostly-LGBTQ+ church that's 40% latinx folk, and with family whose careers take place largely in Mexico. I've given up on trying to explain why that's a bad idea. It never works. Even analogies to things that she personally has experienced don't work. It just makes her defensive and sad. Now I just grimace and inevitably lock eyes with other people in the room who are equally frustrated. The people who know her well know that she's not overtly racist in most ways. At least not more racist than the average white person. Just the jokes. People who don't know her just see a racist old white lady, which is not an exceptional thing to encounter.
posted by eotvos at 9:06 AM on March 10, 2022

I've been thinking about this since it was posted and it wasn't until today that I realized yes, sort of! Aside from hearing friends' kids tell jokes verbally, jokes are a bit of a thing on a MMORPG I play. During certain seasonal group events, or in areas where a lot of players hang out, people will sometimes start telling jokes. Once one person starts, other people sometimes follow. They're often riddles or very brief stories culminating in puns, sometimes classic jokes, sometimes ones the teller may have just thought up before typing into the chat--often a joke involving one of the fictional types of humanoids in the game world. (The seasonal group events probably encourage this kind of thing because there are conspicuous NPCs who do riddles and knock-knock jokes.)

Anyway, these are typed into a live chat rather than told orally, so they may not count for your purpose, but I was sort of tickled to think of it all of a sudden.
posted by wintersweet at 12:21 PM on March 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

In the lockdown phase of the pandemic my friend and I would talk on the phone everyday. During the course of our conversation usually a word would come to the forefront of our discussion. I would then go to upjoke and search the word and get all the jokes from Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram that contain our word. I would read all the joke with that word. Some of the jokes went way beyond offensive, however there were always a few gems.
For example under the word Oak is the following joke : What's the difference between an oak tree and a tight shoe?

One makes acorns, the other makes corns ache.
posted by Xurando at 2:36 PM on March 10, 2022

As a Scottish resident I am going to mention guising in the context of jokes. Guising is a Halloween/Samhain custom similar to trick or treat - except that that a each kid is expected to contribute a song or a joke in exchange for their treat. Where we live the children are mostly pretty young and the parents hover in the background to offer prompts to their little Draculas should they make a mistake. Guising jokes are pretty much dad jokes relayed, often relayed from one dad to another by a 6 year old.
posted by rongorongo at 9:28 PM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

Heh - like underage joke mules...
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:36 PM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

I am going to echo those who say that I hear much fewer jokes than I did growing up. And I have a theory: most tellers of jokes are relaying them rather than making them up. As such telling a joke is a little like comparing an original performance of a piece of music with an amateur rendition from sheet music. Once upon a time that was the the way most people heard music - in a passed along version that was almost certainly inferior to the original performance.

These days there isn't really that need to try to pass on a joke that way - you just dig out a phone and show somebody the original performance - or the written joke if that works better.
posted by rongorongo at 11:31 AM on March 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

One of my 6th graders just came up to me and told me this amazing joke, apropos of nothing:

Q: What do a cigarette and a hamster have in common?

A: Neither one is dangerous until you put it in your mouth and light it in fire.

and I thought this thread would like to know.
posted by charmedimsure at 1:50 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]