Jokes That Rely On Puns

or are they?

As a big proponent of the dadjoke I want to argue that a dadjoke is not just a pun. I see lots of material submitted here that might be better suited for /r/punny.

Speaking as a dad, for me a classic dad joke is highly dependent on the context.

I can't whip out old standbys at any moment and call them proper dadjokes. If I'm driving my kid to school I can't just ask him "Hey, do you know why the kids couldn't see the pirate movie? It was rated aaarrrgh!". That's just a bad joke.

OTOH, if my kid says "are" kinda funny (which he has before), and I make a joke about him being the youngest pirate I know (I may or may not have done this before), then that's a dadjoke. A shitty one, but still a dadjoke. The best context ones are where a situation presents itself and the dad takes the opportunity to make the lame joke (as in a post from awhile back where the OP overheard three or four dads make almost the exact same joke at an aquarium).

Straight up puns should go to /r/punny. Context specific jokes which rely on vagaries of the language or the funny situation, should stay here.

Just my two cents worth.