Taking Back the Dad Joke

Anyone can tell a bad joke. It takes courage to laugh at one.

Want to hear a Potassium joke?

K.

Showcased here is what we call a Dad Joke. Dad Jokes come in all shapes and sizes and elicit all manner of reactions from groans to eye rolls to blank stares to requests that the person who delivered the joke “please, stop.” But we also can’t help but laugh at them. Dad Jokes are kind of like Nickelback songs — reviled in public but in private, we know all the words.

The Atlantic’s Ashley Fetters wrote a story on the origins of the Dad Joke, in which she asked Stanley Dubinsky, a dad and English professor at the University of South Carolina why people love to hate and hate to love Dad Jokes.

He suggests, Fetters writes, that “their appeal could be rooted in the desire to take a momentary break from an increasingly stressful environment, especially online. The political climate and the polarization of discourse, on social media and elsewhere, have ‘disrupted the way we talk to each other. We live in an age of a new nastiness.’”

Think about The Onion or the humor section of any news site which satirizes events in social, political, and global landscapes. For some, knowing laughter is immediate but for others not familiar with the niche humor displayed, they’re excluded from getting the joke. And as satire moves closer and closer to simply reflecting reality, even people who get the joke might not find it funny.

Which brings us to Dad Jokes. Everyone gets Dad Jokes which is a part of what makes them terrible and also why we can’t help but love them. They’re often unfairly maligned as dumb, lazy, and effortless but a lot of work goes into a Dad Joke! They have to rely on a base of universal knowledge picked up in grade school, like knowing K is the symbol for Potassium. They have to take into account rhythm and sound. A joke like — “Is the pool safe for diving? It deep ends.” — doesn’t make sense unless you say it and hear the joke inherent. It also involves clever wordplay, like, “I was just looking at my ceiling. Not sure if it’s the best ceiling in the world, but it’s definitely up there.”

Dad Jokes don’t necessarily have to come from dads, either. Anyone can tell a Dad Joke. Maybe we should be having more fun with them.

We asked our resident Dad Joke enthusiast, Edwin Lee, office manager at Project Worldwide in New York City, to give us his best groan-inducing, so-bad-they’re-good jokes to celebrate Father’s Day. We challenge you to come up with a few of your own.

1. What did the yoga instructor say when her landlord tried to evict her? Namaste.
2. Why did the mushroom go to the party? Because he was a fungi.
3. Why can’t your nose be 12 inches long? Because then it would be a foot.
4. Why did the golfer bring two pairs of pants? In case he got a hole in one.
5. What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft? A flat minor.
6. Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was outstanding in his field.
7. How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? Ten tickles.
8. How did the hipster burn his tongue? He drank his coffee before it was cool.
9. You know what’s really odd? Numbers not divisible by 2.
10. My interviewer asked if I could perform under pressure. I said no, but I can do a good Bohemian Rhapsody.