Meta-jokes | Hacker News Reader

Meta-jokes

en.wikipedia.org

63 pointsColinWright22 comments

A visitor from out of town ventured into the local tavern and there found a circle of friends greatly enjoying themselves. The newcomer watched and listened from a spot just inside the tavern's door. He saw someone stand and speak briefly, then heard the throng roar its approval. He saw another fellow, taking his turn, rise and utter a few syllables. Again, those gathered returned a chorus of laughter.

The stranger moved closer to the center to hear better. "34!" he heard, and laughter. "29!" The regulars laughed again. He nudged the man closest to him and asked, "What's going on?" "We've all known one another forever. We like to entertain ourselves with stories, and always the same stories. Long ago, we began laughing before the teller could complete the punch line. Later, we dispensed with the middle parts too. A few words to set up the story were enough to refresh our memories. Most recently, we dropped even the introductions and began identifying the stories just by numbers." "May I try?" the newcomer asked. "42!"

Silence fell over the crowd.

"What's the matter? Isn't 42 a funny one?"

"42 is hilarious. But pal, you don't know how to tell a story."

http://people.cornellcollege.edu/ltabak/articles/remembrance...

You can use a similar setup with:

"Just then, one of the group said '42' and everyone chuckled, apart from person explaining [who probably needs an identity for this variant to work], who doubled up in paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter. After a minute or two, he mastered himself and wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes.

The stranger said, "What's the matter? Are you OK?". The other man said, "Yes, sure. It's just that I hadn't heard that one before."

Thank you for this link, I really like this one:

"There once was an X from place B,

Who satisfied predicate P,

The X did thing A,

In a specified way,

Resulting in circumstance C."

I'm afraid I don't have an attribution but this is my favourite:

Three woman walk into a bar, and the first turns to the others and says "We've finally colonised a male dominated joke format"

The jokes in that wiki are hilarious...

My favourite, Bill Bailey:

"Three blind mice walk into a bar, but they are unaware of their surroundings so to derive humour from it would be exploitative"

and

"Three blokes walk into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability."

  A turner of phrases quite pleasin'
  Had a penchant for trick'ry and teasin'
  In his songs the last line
  Might seem sans design
  What I mean is: without why or wherefore.

 --Douglas Hofstadter

Thanks, this link gave me a good laugh.

"The timing. What's the worst thing about Irish jokes?"

My girlfriend inflicted this one on me last night:

  There was a young bard of Japan
  Whose limericks never would scan
  When they said it was so,
  He replied, "Yes, I know,
  But I always try to fit as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can."

Can someone explain why this link is here? Am I missing something? Genuine question.

Sure thing. HN is for things that hackers find interesting, not just programming or startups. Things that are self-referential or “meta” have a strong presence in Hacker culture, Gödel-Escher-Bach and Lisp being totemic examples. Humor is, well, pleasing, and meta-humour combines something pleasing with a nod to something interesting. Finally, creating or dissecting meta-jokes has a hacking aspect to it. What is the structure of this joke? How does it work? What does it say about other jokes? These questions are interesting in their own right.

Humour can be a very serious subject. Why do human laugh? What is the social purpose of telling jokes? Is it important? Or is it a “bug in the system” that we exploit? What is going on in the brain when we laugh at the punch line of a joke? Is it the same thing that goes on when we observe the “switch” ending of a movie like “The Sixth Sense” or “The Sting?”

Or you can just laugh at the jokes and move along :-)

Oh, thanks. I thought maybe there was some reason why this was posted today (esp given that I just read your meta-joke blog post) other than the inherent interestingness of meta-humour. Fair enough; although the comment did look like it, it really wasn't a whingy "this isn't news for nerds" sort of comment.

Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/917/

Why did the chicken cross the road? To have his motives questioned.

I particularly like this one.

Indeed, I've never met a joke I didn't like.

> An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The bartender turns to them, takes one look, and says, "What is this - some kind of joke?"

If that's a meta-joke, then I suppose the version I heard is a meta-meta-joke:

A priest, a rabbi, and a mormon walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says "What is this, some kind of joke? Mormons don't drink!"

Could you explain the first one?

The bartender says, “What is this - some kind of joke?” because a great deal of jokes are set up with three people of different ethnicities (or some other kind of group) walking into a bar.

Also, anti-jokes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antijoke

My favourite:

A: Knock, knock! B: Who's there? A: The Interrupting Cow. B: The Interrupt-- A: MOOOOOOOO!!

I can't claim credit for this, but:

  Knock, knock
  Who's there?
  Interrupting coefficient of friction
  Interrupting coeff -- MUUUUUUU

The philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser summarised Jewish logic as "If P, so why not Q?"

oh wow.

It would be interesting to design a programming language around jewish logic.

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