Lindsey Bever in The Washington Post:
While there are few studies on dad jokes themselves, Silvia has been analyzing them to determine what makes some funnier than others. In a preprint of his study titled “What’s brown and sticky?” (hint: a stick), Silvia and a colleague analyzed more than 32,000 dad jokes from a subreddit, r/dadjokes, and identified three qualities that appeared to make up the best dad jokes — puns, literalization and pedantic humor, he said.
Silvia said some of the most classic ones use a pun: “So long, boiling water. You will be mist.”
Literalization, which turns a common concept or expression into a physical reality, is widely used, as well: “I’m worried about the calendar. Its days are numbered,” he said.
With pedantic humor, he said, the jokester sets up the joke and then derails it: “What’s blue and smells like red paint? Blue paint.” “So there is at least a weak recipe for humor,” Silvia said. Using Reddit comments and upvotes as popularity metrics, Silvia determined that when it comes to a solid dad joke structure, people found the question-and-answer framing funnier, such as: “Did you hear about the two thieves who stole a calendar? They each got six months.”
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.