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The laugh's no longer on us


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Hi all. Just shared a great joke with a young person the other day, The response was a blank stare. Then I was told that mine was a "Grandpa joke" and therefore no longer funny. Now, hold on there, pardner! I can cope with a body that is in decline, a world that has gone nuts, and the idea that kale is a food. But damned if I can grasp the idea that funny isn't funny anymore! How are the rest of you Old Coots handling this absurdity? :huh:

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Nick, it was a visual joke. Take your hand with fingers pointed downward and rest your fingertips on a tabletop. Then bounce the hand along a line across the surface. "What is this?" "It's a squid running the hurdles."   Got a million of 'em. Can't understand why the kids are unappreciative. Come to think of it, nobody else likes my squid jokes either, but that's beside the point.  :lol:

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7 hours ago, flyingleaf said:

Oh boy. How many Magpies can you get out of a Scotsman's Kilt? It depends on the length of it's perch.:rolleyes: 

Talking of Scotsmen how can you tell what Clan one is?

Lift up his kilt and if he has a quarter pounder he is  a MacDonald!:wacko:

 

 

 

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There are many jokes that also rely on shared cultural context. If the context is not shared, the joke falls flat.

 

There is an old and slightly tasteless one I remember "What type of wood doesn't float?"

 

The answer "Natalie" elicited groans even back in the day, but to anyone under a certain age, the joke would have both zero meaning and zero humor, since they would be very, VERY unlikely to know who Natalie Wood was, or any of the other circumstances of the so-called joke.

 

Hence: Grandpa joke.

 

Try saying "Where's the beef?" to anyone under a certain age. (Pretty much everyone) And there will be zero shared memories, and no smile, except one for how weird old people are. :lol:

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30 minutes ago, Bassman said:

I enjoy making my daughters and other "youngsters" cringe...it's all in my Grandfather job specification!!!

 

I'm rapidly falling into your camp. Love telling a joke to a  youngster and then standing there with a straight face as they try to figure out how to keep from slapping me upside the head.

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7 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Try saying "Where's the beef?" to anyone under a certain age. (Pretty much everyone) And there will be zero shared memories, and no smile, except one for how weird old people are. :lol:

 

Not true - I laugh every single time. Best commercial ever!

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Jokes work the other way round too  - from youngster to oldie. This year's top 10 jokes from the Edinburgh festival (as voted by the public) were, in my opinion, not funny at all.

 

I remember the days of Derek and Clive, the Pythons etc. Now they were funny (anyone remember learning about how to teach ravens to fly underwater?). Days when "Political Correctness" didn't exist, and everybody was offended, but we all laughed anyway. I am of very strong Irish descent and laughed out loud with everyone else at jokes such as:

 

"Did you hear the one about the Irish hijacker? He asked for $20,000 and a parachute).

 

Et al..

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"Where's the beef"?? Sorry I don't get because we probably do not have this commercial downunder??

Did you hear about the Irish pilot who crashed a Cessna 172 into an Irish cemetery?   They have recovered 300 bodies so far!!!! Groan......;

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1 hour ago, Fizzelle said:

Jokes work the other way round too  - from youngster to oldie. This year's top 10 jokes from the Edinburgh festival (as voted by the public) were, in my opinion, not funny at all.

 

I remember the days of Derek and Clive, the Pythons etc. Now they were funny (anyone remember learning about how to teach ravens to fly underwater?). Days when "Political Correctness" didn't exist, and everybody was offended, but we all laughed anyway. I am of very strong Irish descent and laughed out loud with everyone else at jokes such as:

 

"Did you hear the one about the Irishman who hijacked a submarine? He asked for $20,000 and a parachute).

 

Et al..

 

Silly me, got the joke all wrong so now corrected!

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I like a joke but have always been useless a telling them, so I don't.  I do feel that some of the humour now-a-days is quite cruel though.  Mind you, thinking about it I suppose some of it always has been.  I couldn't ever laugh at Laurel and Hardy with Stan always getting slapped around the head.  Charley Chaplin made me cringe and more recently the way Basil Faulty slapped the waiter (what's 'is name) around didn't strike me as funny.

 

I suppose I like the humour that comes about more naturally in situation comedies like Ronnie Corbett and his partner Ronnie Barker;  Open All Hours and the 'Four Candles' being mistaken for 'Fork'andles' or vice versa.  And stand up comedians make me laugh.  Tommy Handley was one and Lennie Henry in more modern times.

 

John

 

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Great stuff guys n  gals. "Are you being served" comes to mind. Mr. Humphries goes to captain Peacock and tells him he has a customer he can't understand. Captain Peacock tells Mr. Humphries this customer is Japanese and he has trouble rolling his tongue around his "R's":rolleyes::lol::D

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16 hours ago, Bassman said:

"Where's the beef"?? Sorry I don't get because we probably do not have this commercial downunder??

Did you hear about the Irish pilot who crashed a Cessna 172 into an Irish cemetery?   They have recovered 300 bodies so far!!!! Groan......;

No, I don't understand "Where's the beef!"

However we did have "Where's the Cheese" down under.

 

Did you hear about the Irish submarine that sank in Galway Bay?

The crew all escaped from the sub but drowned when their parachutes failed to open.:wacko:

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  • 2 weeks later...

You guys are cracking me up!  :lol:   Don't know why I waited so long to visit this section.

 

Speaking of blank stares.......I was just at the coast for a week and camped by a bay in Crescent City, CA.   I saw some seagulls flying across the bay and innocently remarked to my wife  "look, those must be Baygulls". 

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Where's the beef!!

 

This 80s commercial created a meme that exists to this day, at least here in America, where the phrase "Wheres the beef" shows up in anything from movies to political campaigns as a request for missing substance in a situation or argument. 

 

 

 

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