[Meta] The real purpose of dad jokes

Back in the before times, when sit-down restaurants existed, I used to order boneless cheese sticks and would just throw the word "boneless" in front of any appetizer with 100% corniness. The purpose of this isn't to make a good joke. It's not a good joke. The purpose is to make my dining companions catch some cringe splash damage and want to crawl into a hole and die out of embarrassment for my being horribly corny.

But there is a real, deeper purpose that I've discovered entirely by accident. People, especially young people, are so self-conscious and worried about saying or doing something embarrassing that it taints a lot of social gatherings. They go to a restaurant and are afraid to speak up even when their order is blatantly wrong. They'll tip well even when the food took an hour to arrive and the server has disappeared into the corn stalks behind a baseball field. It takes 2 hours of hanging out together before some friends finally stop nitpicking themselves, uncomfortable in their own bodies and brains, feeling perpetually judged, and begin to relax. These are the kinds of people who go to sleep every night replaying cringey moments from high school. Their last thought of the day is when the Burger King girl said, "Enjoy your meal!" and they said, "Thanks, you too."

It takes 2 hours and/or a lot of booze before they're comfortable enough to take conversational risks and truly reveal themselves. But if I come right out of the gate with a really dumb joke, then we can cut to the chase. There's less danger because someone in the group already shot themselves in the foot, right off the bat. They pulled a pin on the cringe grenade and then jumped on it.

You cringe at my dumb joke and then we're over the hump. Someone has already done something pretty stupid, so go ahead and order the hubcap of nachos and a massive chocolate shake because nobody is going to judge you poorly while they're all judging me.

In terms of price negotiations (haggling), there is a psychological concept called "anchoring". You throw out the first number and all subsequent numbers are compared to that number. This is the same idea. We've already set the humor standard pretty low at "boneless cheese sticks", so you can say the dumbest shit you want and, as long as it's not worse than my cheesy joke, it won't matter.

This is why, when you were a teenager and your dad took you and some friends out, your dad made corny jokes. He knew they were corny jokes. You and your friends un

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👤︎ u/Permatato
đź“…︎ May 18 2020
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5 Cringey Puns

(Sorry For Not Posting, I Was Busy)

  1. Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.

  2. I wasn't originally going to get a brain transplant, but then I changed my mind.

  3. Why don't some couples go to the gym? Because some relationships don't work out.

  4. I didn't use to care much for most puns but over time some of them have groan on me.

  5. A friend of mine tried to annoy me with bird puns, but I soon realized that toucan play at that game.

(Source For All Puns: https://www.punoftheday.com/cgi-bin/disppuns.pl?ord=F&cat=0&sub=0&page=1)

đź‘Ť︎ 8
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👤︎ u/punsdaily
đź“…︎ Apr 02 2020
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Nihilist Dad Jokes

Why did the scarecrow win a prize? Because he stood alone in his field! He stood there for years, rotting, until he was forgotten.

I tell my kids, you’re allowed to watch the TV all you want… Just don’t turn it on! This way they will begin to understand the futility of all things.

How does a penguin build a house? Igloos it together. Like all animals, it is an automaton, driven by blind genetic imperative, marching slowly to oblivion.

Why don’t skeletons go trick or treating? They have no body to go with them! The skeletons are like us: alone, empty, dead already.

I don’t really like playing soccer. I just do it for kicks! Like all of humanity, I pretend to enjoy things, and others pretend to care about my charade.

You hear about the moon restaurant? Good food, no atmosphere! If you eat there, you forfeit your life, which would make no difference to the universe as a whole.

Why did the blonde focus on an orange juice container? It said concentrate! She realized that society’s depictions of her were like the juice: formulaic, insipid, fake.

My wife told me to put the cat out. I didn’t know it was on fire! By the time I could act, it was incinerated, a harbinger of the path we all must take.

How come the invisible man wasn’t offered a job? They just couldn’t see him doing it! This man stands for all of us: unseen, misunderstood, irrelevant.

Today I gave away my old batteries… Free of charge! No one wanted them, so I became angry and threw them in the yard. The battery acid now leaks into the soil, killing a colony of ants. A sparrow eats their bodies and is poisoned. Somewhere in the Serengeti, a lion devours his rival’s cubs. Then the lion is shot by a poacher and sold to an unloved rich man whose father was an unloved rich man. In five billion years, the Sun will become a bloated giant, boiling the oceans and consuming our pointless cruelties with flames. I wake sweat-drenched and screaming, staring at the visage of a faceless god. “WHAT HAVE I DONE?! HOW COULD I BRING A CHILD INTO THIS WORLD!?” But this god, like all gods, is nothing—just my son’s Wilson baseball mitt, sitting on my dresser, mocking me.

Will February March? No, but April May! Soon we become ash, and time forgets us.

Source: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nihilist-dad-jokes

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👤︎ u/vorschlaghammer
đź“…︎ Feb 03 2019
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The Cheerio Joke

Oh boy do I have a joke for you kids! Its called the cheerio joke.


So there is this land called cheerio land and in cheerio land there are 7 classes of cheerio, 0-5 and the frosted cheerios. Now there is this level 0 cheerio. Hes homeless, living out on the street, probaly an alchoholic. But he falls in love with a frosted cheerio princess. So one day he sneaks into the royal gala and goes up to the princess and asks her "will you marry me?" Now she says "I like your style, youre a good looking guy, a bit scruffy but I like you. Tell you what I will marry you if you can become a frosted cheerio" So our guy goes back with a determination and gets a job and starts to pay off his debts. Now by having a job and his debts paid he becomes a level 1 cheerio. So he works, and he works, and he works, and he WORKS and he finally becomes a level 2 cheerio. Now he goes back to the princess and askes her again, "will you marry me?" she says "no honey you really do have to become a frosted cheerio first." So he goes back and he works and works, hes a fryboy at McGrubers or something, I dont care. So he works and he works and he gets promoted at the restraunt and is making more money. And he works and he works and he works and by having that income raise he finally becomes a level 3 cheerio. He feels sucessful for the first time in his life but he is starting to fall back on his old ways. One day he goes to the casino and he loses and he loses and he loses and he gambled all his money away and he gets fired to boot because gambling is against company policy. So he is back down to a level 1 cheerio. He gets a job on a production line at a nearby factory and determines himself not to fall back ever again. So he works and he works and he works and he works and he WORKS, level 2, level 3, and he is doing great again. He is promoted to Floor manager of the factory and he is doing great and becomes a level 4 cheerio. But then one day a rival company sabotages their operation by putting poison in their toothpaste or whatever the hell they were making. They have to pay out damages and PR and the like and they declare bankruptcy. He is knocked back down to level 2 for the lack in income. But he is hired almost straight away by a branch of a huge conglomerate because they recognized how hard of a worker he is. So he works, level 3, works, level 4, and he works and works and WORKS. So he is promoted t

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👤︎ u/t17389z
đź“…︎ Oct 17 2013
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