When people used to congregate in pubs in large numbers and with great frequency – this is going back a few decades – they’d often end up telling jokes. Some were good, some were bad and there were many that you wouldn’t want to tell, much less hear, today. But they’d always be preceded by the joke teller saying something along the lines of:
‘Here’s a good one…’
‘Reminds me of the one about the…’
‘Did you hear the one about the bloke…’
‘Stop me if you’ve heard this one…’
So not only did everyone know that a joke was coming, they also knew that it had been told before; that it was a joke that was ‘doing the rounds’. It didn’t make the jokes any less funny that you knew this (assuming they were funny at all, but even then most people would chuckle out of politeness or early-onset drunkenness), but it did mean you knew the tellers hadn’t made the jokes up themselves. In my various circles of friends, colleagues and family members, I’ve never met anyone who’s actually made up a joke. And yes, I have asked. A timely bon mot or rejoinder, definitely. They can be funny as hell, but they’re generally of the moment. They don’t suddenly get shared by groups of people in pubs. If the exact same circumstances that provoked the funny response were to happen again, elsewhere, and you were there along with a group of people who hadn’t witnessed the previous occasion, and you remember the wording of the witty response and you get the timing right, then yes. You could pass it off as your own smart witticism and bask in the glory. But it’s a big if.
But something has changed. Well, a lot’s changed. People don’t go to pubs quite as much or as often as they used to. And when they do, I’m pretty sure they don’t stand around regaling one another with jokes. (I’m happy to be corrected on this.) People are still telling jokes on social media. But they’re not of the shaggy dog variety, with long set-ups before a (hopefully) side-splitting punchline. And they’re not snappy little knock-knock jokes, either. Jokes online generally include funny responses to items in the news, or comments made by public figures; or they’re observations about the human condition and the craziness of modern life. And they can be fucking hilarious.
The biggest change for me, though, is how people are quite happy to pass off what for the sake of brevity I will call ‘gags’ as their own work. I didn’t notice this trend on Twitter, but it’s rampant on Threads. People see a gag and instead of reposting it, they’ll go to the trouble (OK, it’s not THAT much trouble) of copy & pasting, just so that it looks like the product of their own wonderful sense of humour.
Why do people do this? I mean, it sometimes works if what they want is a few hundred likes and maybe a few extra followers, but what else in in it for them? And how does it make them feel? ‘Wow, that gag I nicked was really popular! I must steal more stuff from other people and develop a greater sense of fraudulently acquired self-esteem!’
I don’t get it. But then I’m someone who still laughs at doctor-doctor jokes.
BraveNewMalden 