Day 4: Like a crappy wine, jokes do not age well

Today, I laughed at: Substitute Teacher: Key & Peele video.
Technically, I laughed at the sports guys at work. Some of the funniest people, I feel, are the ones who work the weird shifts. You have to be funny to be able to laugh at the fact you're working late at night on a Friday, when most of your friends are out doing fun things. Anyway, a few months ago, they discovered this video and we laughed at it. Tonight, it was re-brought up, only to bring about laughter in the newsroom again.








I like how some old jokes have a way of becoming funny again with time, such as the example above. More often, though, they fizzle out, losing all meaning.

If you're a fan of Good Job Brain, they recently did an episode in which they mentioned the phenomenon that happens when you read or say a word repeatedly and it loses all meaning. It's called semantic satiation. That's the problem with jokes sometimes.

It annoys me I'm even using
this on my blog.

I'd like to think most of my friends are at the ages when we don't "kill" jokes anymore. We're also different enough where we haven't all seen the same movie and, therefore, quote it incessantly. (I never saw "Borat" simply because I was already sick of everyone saying, "Ooh, it's very niiice," and just speaking in that accent in general.) It's nice to have something funny we've seen and be able to tell a group of people about it, making it a new experience for them.

That said, I wonder about the videos I post. I'm SURE these are far from new. I'm not on Reddit but I feel like that's where the cool people hang out. The ones who knew the jokes because they were funny for the rest of us. But, I would hate to be those people. Because I would have to sift through a lot of crap that is not funny and will not become a meme or internet phenomenon.

I would put myself somewhere in the middle of this trickle effect of knowing the newest funny thing. A bunch of my friends love Reddit. So they pretty much show me the funny stuff, if it's funny enough to be shared, that is. But I'm not as low on the totem pole as the older aunts and family members who are just now discovering that, oh! Cats and their memes are, in fact, quite funny!

I didn't even realize at the time I have a similar
scary face to the Borat photo above.
Believe me, I am groaning right now.

That's when a joke is dead, unfortunately. When the older generation gets a hold of a joke and it spreads through the email forwards.

Actually, I'm not sure what's worse, jokes passed around a year later or internet urban legends that have been proven false. But I'll still see someone post a graphic saying some celebrity will give away $100,000 for every "Like" some photo gets.

I can't wait until I'm older, actually. I'm glad my sense of humor will be watered down enough to find the internet full of humor. Or danger. Or a threat. I'll probably just cancel my internet and hope my grandkids print the funny memes and explain them to me.

Next: Day 5