noahtheduke

take data in change it push it out

cis - straight - white - 30 or 40 years old
clojure programmer
living in the shadow of grief


nothing remains forever empty


Profile pic commissioned from @ICELEVEL


I hate that “dad joke” has become a cultural thing, specifically being used to refer to puns. Puns are great, but dad jokes as I understood them are about deliberate misunderstandings for comedic effect. They can use puns to find or create the misunderstanding, but the fun comes from the parallel conversation and the moment of realization.


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in reply to @noahtheduke's post:

I wrote about this at length somewhere. A dad joke is specifically when Dad makes a pun when you're trying to actually get something, and it sounds like he's taking you seriously at first, but a moment later you realize you're being mocked instead.

Hah I almost referenced that post but decided against it cuz I couldn’t remember the author. It’s a shame that you (and others, based on the replies) had such negative experiences with it.

My dad never mocked me when he made those kinds of jokes to me, so my experience has largely been very positive. A normal conversation, then a moment of “oh there’s a joke happening here, can I figure it out before he reveals?” midway through, or him saying something that makes me go, “ah damn it, you got me again.”

I wonder where the mocking comes from, why that’s a part of the game for your dad and others.

Well, I didn't mean it as mean-spiritedly as that, just that when you think you're being taken seriously and then find out you're just being roped into a joke, the disappointment is hard to avoid. You might understand it, you might be able to laugh at it, but it's disappointing nonetheless to find out you aren't getting what you wanted.