Regarding Reddit and puns.

LetsScoreSomeCake · 3 months

Puns work way better in written form than when spoken. I don't really feel strongly about them in either a negative or positive way, but it does seem like puns in conversation come off way cheesier than when they're in writing.

Can you imagine if in a group of 10 people, when the first one made a pun, the other nine all made related puns in succession?

Zazie_Lavender · 3 months

Puns are easy. Like TV dinners which require minimal effort to cook, puns are quick to yield a bit of Karma.

This certainly tides people over until they get an idea for more quality content usually.

Unless that person is a karma whore.

specialkake · 3 months

I love puns, and I love pun threads. There, I said it.

derpstuff · 3 months

People like to get upvotes and memes are an easy way to get a few cheap ones. These puns are just another meme.

ffreak3 · 3 months

Well, if you ever came to a meeting of one of my games clubs, I think you would be absolutely horrified. We tend to favour original puns more, but we still do go off on tangents of about 20-30 double entendres & puns before we get back to the game.

arun_bassoon · 3 months

I don't know a single person in real life who makes pun jokes quite as often as redditors seem to

Allow me to be a counterexample. Punning has been a family tradition just about as far as we have spoken English (on both my mother's and father's side, interestingly). I frequently drop them into conversations both written and spoken, to the delight (or sometimes despair) of my friends. Here is a collection of my favorites, most of which are original.

Having made a lot of puns, I've noticed that punning is rather repetitive. I've definitely reused puns if the situation calls for it, and nobody really cares if you do it infrequently enough. This can occur for a number of reasons: the pun already fits perfectly, coming up with a new pun is hard, etc.

This is what leads to the predictable puns: particularly for people who aren't great punsters, it's far easier to copy a previous pun than to invent a new, better one. It's sort of an outgrowth of Reddit's tendency to run memes into the ground.

<rant>
Also, the most frequently reposted pun that pisses me off? The "... and no pun in ten did!" It happens in EVERY collection of puns, and it was funny at most twice. And yet people still treat it like it's the funniest thing ever. Sigh
</rant>

Of course, the proximate reasons for punning on Reddit are that they are appealing and funny, so they attract upvotes. This causes people to post more, and a positive feedback cycle is formed. If Reddit downvoted puns, there wouldn't be so many.

Atreus11 · 3 months

I, for the most part, like unexpected puns. The ones that are very related to the topic at hand, especially. Not the typical ones you see, like the "nazi that one coming ones". Those suck. But a good pun? Like that huge "In Soviet Russia, bomb disarms you!" pun a while back. Can't beat that.

Hirosheb · 3 months

It's the "so bad it's good" principle. These are the same people who have "bad movie nights," "ugly sweater parties," and laugh at jokes that are purposefully lame.

YoureNotPunny · 3 months

Cheap puns are like the imgur.com links that should have been self posts. They are made because they are easy up votes and take very little effort, originality, or intelligence.

Puns are pointless comments, and according to the reddiquette should be down voted as they add nothing to the conversation. There will always be some people who say they do add something to the conversation, but they are just kidding themselves because they like to make puns.

Just because some of them occasionally make you smile does NOT mean that they add to the conversation.

The sad thing is that the puns and pointless comments are so out of control that over 50% of comments on a front page link from the default sub reddits are irrelevant to the topic at hand. (Only applies to articles that have more than 50 comments. As the number of comments increases, the likelihood of a comment being relevant decreases with every further comment.)

flatsperm · 3 months

Puns are the same as funny images... is "low investment content" the term used here? It takes no time to read the pun, and you don't have to read the link or any context whatsoever to understand the pun, so it gets upvoted.

Furthermore, you don't have to read the link to write the pun. You have a brain, you want karma for being so clever, but you don't want to read the link because you want to get in a hundred witty comments per day. So puns are the answer.

tppiel · 3 months

I don't know a single person in real life who makes pun jokes quite as often as redditors seem to

They don't make these jokes so often actually. What happens is that they get upvoted heavily, so you see them more than other comments.

Maybe the proper question is why people upvote silly jokes more than insightful comments, but that is a different discussion.

youhatemeandihateyou · 3 months

Also, people seem to confuse a running gag with a pun.

creepig · 3 months

A good pun thread, one that stays away from the tired old five puns, is truly delightful to some of us. Like any joke though, it grows stale when repeated ad nauseum.

frownyface · 3 months

I don't know a single person in real life who makes pun jokes quite as often as redditors seem to

Reddit is a website with thousands of contributors. Selectively treating all of its output as if it were coming from one persona seems to be a reoccurring misconception. Subreddits like ShitRedditSays are pretty much built on the idea, and actively perpetuate it.

fwr · 3 months

I don't know a single person in real life who makes pun jokes quite as often as redditors seem to

Perhaps you hang out with the wrong crowd.

aboynamedsu · 3 months

I'm probably in the minority, but I've never had a problem with pun threads, or much of the joke and meme posting that others constantly complain about. I just enjoy them briefly for a cheap laugh and then blow right past them. It doesn't detract from my experience, since I can just minimize that thread or take the .5 seconds it takes to scroll down to find the real content.

I just see them as casual little breaks in the conversation. They lighten things up and are a sort of moment of camaraderie between users. Familiar reddit in-jokes are like little knowing glances between friends, and I see nothing wrong with that. This is a community, after all. They can be overplayed of course, but a lot of times this can actually even be part of what makes them funny. As long as they're apropos, I have no problem. And from what I've always noticed, when they're not apropos, and especially when the timing is off, they usually get downvoted rather quickly.

I'm here primarily for substance too, but I've never really understood all the hatred for puns, memes, etc. This hatred has itself almost become a meme, and is often more annoying than the puns and memes themselves. In fact it regularly comes off (to me) as a bit elitist and arrogant, and reminds me of stuffy academics sitting in the corner nasally mocking the more socially well-adjusted people across the room who are having a little innocent and mindless fun during a study break.

But then again, I don't really frequent subreddits like /r/funny, /r/adviceanimals, etc., so maybe I've just become out of touch with how bad it's become.

I think a lot of it has to do with your own mindset and how you relate to reddit. I just take everything for what it is, enjoying the good (of which there is much, despite all of the pseudo-self-deprecation on reddit) and ignoring the bad.

Nog64 · 3 months

For what it's worth, puns are actually pretty funny in my circle of friends (although we tend not to use the same puns, unless we are using them in a sarcastic way, generally also denigrating reddit)

However, puns are popular on sites other than reddit (something awful, 4chan, etc). I think, as others have said, because it is really easy to set up a cheap, visual gag with a pun, they have become really popular on the internet. It is also, to an extent a way to quickly insult someone who has put a lot of thought of into a post, video, etc., forming a second subset of visual gags. Imagine a long post about having a grandparent escaping the holocaust only to be killed by Allied troops, followed with the reply "I did nazi that coming"; the incongruity of the "care" in the first post followed by the lack of it in the second provides a joke in and of itself.

At rate, puns at some point became a part of "internet culture" and doing is cool for coolness sake to some extent. Some have achieved more or less meme status, or have piggybacked onto memes like advice animals and rage comics. Thus, puns are also seen as "funny and cool on the internet" meaning places where internet social status exists, like reddit, are going to see more puns more often.

ThaddyG · 3 months

I thought the pun threads were pretty damn funny when I first signed up. Then I realized that the same puns just get reused over and over and I got bitter and jaded.

BreSput · 3 months

Me and my friends called these kind of jokes (and similar ones) "Dad Jokes" because they're the kind of joke that your dad tells you that when you were a kid made you embarrassed that someone could even utter such a terrible joke. I had a highschool teacher who loved these jokes too. I can vividly remember this one because it was just so bad:

What did Adam say on Dec. 24th?

Merry Christmas Eve.

It hurts to write that. LOL

They're funny because they aren't good at all. The lamer the pun, the funnier by my lights. Don't try to analyze humor, it escapes analysis. Some things are funny because they are horrible, some things are funny because they are unfunny. Makes it no sense.

johnnypixel · 3 months

Is the problem with Reddit and puns or Reddit and BUNS...

but seriously...

I think it's because the front page isn't about quality content anymore. People (especially in /r/funny) are upvoting anything mildly amusing, and thus, any old random humour or in-joke hits the front-page within an hour. Puns are as mildly amusing as you can get and there's plenty of room to make them in-jokes too.

EagleFalconn · 3 months

Frankly? I think puns are funny and a well written pun, as some of the heavily upvoted pun threads can be, are HILARIOUS.

Some people might not like them, but I appreciate the wit involved.

PotatoMusicBinge · 3 months

I think you're missing the whole point of puns, which is to offend people with their terribleness and then laugh at that offence. "Rice to meet you!"? Not funny. Someone being offended by how terrible "Rice to meet you!" is? Very funny indeed

AncillaryCorollary · 3 months

According to Ricky Gervais, puns are the worst, lowest form of comedy.

immatureboi · 3 months

I honestly think that the existence of puns is an indicator of a healthy community. In the cheezburger network (on the peak of their fame, i dunno if theyre still famous) I saw constant puns from regulars. that's not exactly a bad thing, but a way to show people that "hey it's all good fun here, folks." In contrast, I see pretentious (and sparse) comments in digg and fark.. Not that I go there or anythurng

Epistaxis · 3 months

From this thread I have learned that upvoting for agreement and downvoting for disagreement do not violate the Theory of Reddit.

takatori · 3 months

I'm glad somebody finally seddit.

lemonpjb · 3 months

Because everyone on this website likes to believe they're so fucking witty, so what better way to validate that than to rehash terrible plays on words over and over again?

nugbug · 3 months

while I think puns are overused here, there´s nothing more obnoxious to me than opening a page or two of r/pics and there´s some picture of a fucking English muffin and I don´t remember why it was important and I´m not amused by it. so I downvote those because it´s not really the pic that is important there, you know?

skepticaljesus · 3 months

Puns are amazing. Anyone who thinks "puns are the lowest form of humor", as is so often blandly repeated, clearly knows nothing about puns or humor.

Measure76 · 3 months

Is your default comment sort set to 'top'? If so, change to 'best', and see less puns.

heyfella · 3 months

hey jerk! puns are lazy writing!

-krusty

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