Rule of three Puns

Update: Thanks for all your applications! Give /u/parin89 and I a few days to take a look and confer!
(if you haven't put your application in yet, you've still got time)

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Greetings /r/dadjokes subscribers,

Years have passed since this sub started up, and there are now literally millions of you. Whoa.

Two million people is just two many two handle for two moderators. Especially these days, when both /u/parin89 and I have two many other responsibilities and a whole lot less time. I'm 200% sure most of you would agree that more mods are needed.

So we're looking for 5 more moderators to get involved. If you're keen to apply, read the rest of this post and answer the three questions in your comment response.

Answer these 3 questions in your reply:

1. How would you describe a dad joke?
2. Do you currently moderate any other subreddits? If yes, which ones.
3. You see a post that is not breaking the rules or reddit's posting guidelines, but is generally disliked by the community. What do you do?

Only apply if:

• You're a reasonable, fair-minded and patient human
• You're in it to keep this community a happy, friendly and safe place for other humans
• You've got previous mod experience from a decent sized community (let's say... 5k+)
• You're cool with the first few months being a trial run
• You understand that while we could use more active moderation, and would benefit from a few more rules, one of the things that makes this community great is that it's pretty open (after all, dad jokes repeat a lot and not every "repost" is necessarily an opportunistic attempt to game karma)

We'd benefit from a few practical things as well, it would be great if:

• You live in a timezone that covers off either the USA, the UK, Australia (we'd like a spread)
• You've got some automod experience
• You've got some sub-customisation experience

Don't apply if:

• You're ready to come out swinging with a power tripping ban hammer
• You're more concerned about Internet points than real people

We'll leave this stickied for a week and then come back to message a few people and make some selections.

We're a fairly advanced society, we need jokes with content that makes us think. All these easy laughs are making us dumber by the second, and we just keep rewarding them with upvotes that convince the lazy among us to keep churning out lazy jokes. Comedy is one of the only common traits things in every society and culture on this planet and we may not always agree with what is funny, it's very subjective, but no society or culture has no comedy. It's one of the most effective unifiers in all human existence. Of course it's just my two cents, but we really need to avoid cheapening it. There are 6500 spoken languages in the world and this is the most widely spoken, the least spoken languages of course being sign language. Someone once said "a world without laughter would be like a world without warmth, a dark hole in the ground filled with cold water." I know they mean well, but I think it's worse than that. There are three unwritten rules for how comedy should function in the world. We have to learn to follow them or we're doomed as a people, forever, however just like there are two butts in the word "assassin", there are two caveats to this dire situation with lessons learned from the best there is. One is the lesson we can take from Switzerland, I'm not entirely sure what makes them so good at integrating comedy into their lives, but their flag is a huge plus. The other is the lesson we can learn from farmers who know how to put what's important first, how to put in the effort into growing something, and they are always outstanding in their field. We get too caught up in standard modalities of thinking and none of us are totally all right, in fact most of us are at least close to half left. In closing, the absence of comedy when you really think about it, is fear. Fear of the ups and downs of life, much like a fear of elevators. And just like a fear of elevators, we all must take steps to avoid it. Thank you for your time.

Disappointed

… u/ebkbk for this post: Today, my son asked "Can I have a book mark?" and I burst into tears. 11 years old and he still doesn't know my name is Brian. made on 24.11. with 38.9k upvotes

[also already made by u/Tface on 25.03. for 16.9k upvotes]

Let's move on to the top 3 of each month:

January:

1. Is this sub still active? by u/I_Fart_Liquids on 01.01. with 36.4k upvotes

2. Gonorrhea would have been a great name for diarrhea medicine by u/daugarten on 20.01. with 30.8k upvotes

3. An open letter to the mods of r/dadjokes: by u/Alfie_13 on 27.01. with 18.9k upvotes

February:

1. Was watching Star Wars with my daughter. She asked why Luke was climbing inside a Tauntaun, I said to keep warm. by u/jakeisbill on 05.02. for 20.3k upvotes

2. My daughter asked me what I'm posting on Reddit... by u/madazzahatter on 25.02. for 18.3k upvotes

3. When a woman is giving birth, she is literally kidding. by u/ownworldman on 23.02. for 17.7k upvotes

March:

1. I got an e-mail saying, "At Google Earth, we can read maps backwards!" and I thought... by u/madazzahatter on 21.03. for 22.2k upvotes

2. Today, my son asked "Can I have a book mark?" and I burst into tears. by u/Tface on 25.03. for 16.9k upvotes.

3. [When I reach home, my 1.5 y.o. son rushes out to the gate to sit in my lap while I park the car. Then he just grabs the steering and starts shaking it with brrrmmm brrrmmm sound. His cute antics always make me forget that he's suffering from a rare disease.](https://www.reddit.com/r/da

There once was a man who had a job driving a passenger train between two large towns. It could be a very dull job to some, but as the old saying goes, one man's trash is another's gold; he wanted to be a railroad man since he was a boy.

He was a wiz behind the controls of the train, and commanded the 15 car vehicle effortlessly as if he had been born to do the job. He prided himself on the fact that he could bend the rules and speed through curves and grades that made other motormen shiver and back off.

One day however, he wasn't so lucky and came round a bend too fast and derailed his train. He backed off the throttle and braked as much as he could, managing to only have one fatality out of 500 passengers on his train.

Months later there was a trial and he was found guilty of manslaughter in the highest degree, a capital offence in that land, and sentenced to die by electric chair. Punishment came swift, unlike most places, and 3 days after sentencing the former railroader was asked for his last meal.

"I'll have a banana," "Just a single banana?" said the perplexed guard. "The warden will grant you a feast and all you want is that?"

"Just a single banana." he said.

After he downed the fruit, he was strapped into the electric chair an hour later.... The warden hit the switch, lights flickered, and the crackle of electricity could be heard for over a minute...

...but our train jockey instead rose from the chair looking more like he got a stiff massage, rather than be put to death! Well in that nation, the law of the land states that if a man somehow survives being put to death, they must be set free...

...And so it came to pass that our engineer was let go...

And for whatever reason, he got his job back!

So he was back railroading again doing the job that he loved. You'd think he'd have been more cautious with this second chance he'd been given, but you'd also be wrong. Speedy Gonzales with a train license decided to gun his locomotive to hard and send it off the tracks again!

Of course, this time he was tried for the same crime, but at a different time (his was a fair commonwealth and double indemnity was simply unheard of!) So fair was their nation, that the jury came up with the same judgement and punishment. So three days later, when asked for his last meal, the engineer simply said "I'll have 2 bananas..."

Not less than 60 minutes after consuming the last morsel was he strapped into the chair and the switch thrown... And....

NOTHING.

I have written this book to sweep away all misunderstandings about the crafty art of punnery and to convince you that the pun is well worth celebrating.... After all, the pun is mightier than the sword, and these days you are much more likely to run into a pun than into a sword. [A pun is a witticism involving the playful use of a word in different senses, or of words which differ in meaning but sound alike.]

Scoffing at puns seems to be a conditioned reflex, and through the centuries a steady barrage of libel and slander has been aimed at the practice of punning. Nearly three hundred years ago John Dennis sneered, “A pun is the lowest form of wit,” a charge that has been butted and rebutted by a mighty line of pundits and punheads.

Henry Erskine, for example, has protested that if a pun is the lowest form of wit, “It is, therefore, the foundation of all wit.” Oscar Levant has added a tag line: “A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don’t think of it first.” John Crosbie and Bob Davies have responded to Dennis with hot, cross puns: “...If someone complains that punning is the lowest form of humor you can tell them that poetry is verse.”

Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century self-appointed custodian of the English language, once thundered, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the national till without remorse... ”

Joseph Addison pronounced that the seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and tho’ they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius, that which is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art.

Far from being invertebrate, the inveterate punster is a brave entertainer. He or she loves to create a three-ring circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent tops, words thrusting their head into the mouths of lions. Punnery can be highly entertaining, but it is always a risky business. The humor can fall on its face, it can lose its balance and plunge into the sawdust, or it can be decapitated by the snapping shut of jaws. While circus performers often receive laughter or applause for their efforts, punsters often draw an obligatory groan for theirs. But the fact that most people groan at, rather than laugh at, puns doesn’t mean that the punnery isn’t fu

I went to the doctor with a hand injury from playing football (in the British sense). I hyper extended my thumb and I have a weird lump on the side. He said there's not much to be done about it. I asked how long the pain might last. He said...

"About two or three months... As a rule of thumb"

Bravo!