LOL Interwebz: “Knock-Knock Jokes Are My Spirit Animal,” Said No One Ever

Every Thursday in LOL Interwebz, Luke T. Harrington explores the quirks and foibles of Internet culture from a Gospel perspective.

“Man, I love Internet joke formats.” said no one ever.

I think a guy who’s sick of lame Internet jokes and will stab you in the face for saying “said no one ever” is my spirit animal.

Whatever doesn’t kill makes you stronger. Except the guy who’s going to stab you in the face. He’ll just kill you.

(PSA: PLEASE, FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN, STOP USING THAT LAST JOKE FORMAT. AN EXAMPLE OF SOMETHING THAT KILLS YOU IS NOT AN “EXCEPTION” TO THE RULE, IT’S JUST AN EXAMPLE OF SOMETHING THAT KILLS YOU. YOU’RE NOT BEING CUTE OR CLEVER, YOU’RE JUST PROVING THAT YOU DON’T KNOW HOW BASIC LOGIC WORKS. AAAAAAUUUUGGGHHHHH!!!)

(ANYWAY.)

If I had to pick the most annoying thing about the Internet, besides all the Nigerian prince scams and the fact that I can’t click on anything without midget porn popping up (I’m not the only one with that problem, right?), it would be how everyone keeps repeating the same joke formats over and over, on the mistaken impression that it will make them clever. I’m open to the possibility that the first person to make a “said no one ever” or “spirit animal” joke might have been an actually funny person, but the second one to do so was not. And the ten-thousandth one was definitely not.

But that’s how we do things on the Internet. We just repeat the same tired memes over and over, hoping no one will notice how desperately lonely we are. The Internet is the worst, amirite?

Except…

Go read this article over at NPR. (It’s okay, I won’t tell your Republican mom.) It’s about knock-knock jokes. Y’know, those lame puns that you use to keep your five-year-old nephew amused so he won’t burn down the garage? Orange you glad I didn’t say banana, et al.?

Apparently, in the 1930s, they were considered the cutting edge of humor.

I’m dead serious. According to the article:

“You can’t turn the radio on anymore without getting one of the Knock-Knock gags,” Jean Mackenzie observed in a radio-listening column in the July 25, 1936, News Herald of Franklin, Pa. “They’re fun and when some of the better orchestras perform them, they’re screams. But you’ve probably found that out for yourself.”

I won’t lie: my jaw actually dropped when I read this. There was a time when people thought knock-knock jokes were funny? That they were screams? And, like, big band orchestras did them? That’d be like if every rap album had lame comedy sketches in between the songs, or something.

But the most striking thing about the article is how familiar the story of the knock-knock joke is. It began with fashionable types (in this case, flappers in the ’20s), then got picked up by entertainers, spread to the general public (“Strangers told them on the streets”), whole nightclubs devoted to knock-knock jokes popped up (presumably with awesome names like “KKluBB KKnocKK-KKnocKK,” or “Don’tKnockIt,” or something), and at last businesses adopted it in their advertising (which killed it dead, obviously).

Finally, everyone was sick of it. And hilariously, according to the article, liking knock-knock jokes began to get treated as a mental disorder, because of course it did, because this was the era of Freud and everyone was convinced they could solve all their problems by psychopathologizing them. (Personally, I blame their mothers.)

We all know how this story ends. The knock-knock joke eventually matured into a certain autumnal glory as a genre of children’s humor, joining an exclusive pantheon shared by Mozart, overalls, and logical positivism as a bad idea we’re all sick of but we keep around because, hey, the kids seem to like it. And make no mistake: that particular pantheon is exclusive. Most memes and crazes have disappeared within a week or two of their inception, leaving hardly a trace.

I think that’s why it’s so easy to get annoyed with the Internet—it keeps those traces around, giving the impression that dumb jokes are a new thing. As the Teacher tells us, though, there is nothing new under the sun. People have always had their stupid crazes, and they’ve always been convinced they were hilarious.

It might be particularly pronounced in the contemporary West, though. Ours is a culture continually drunk on novelty—perpetually bored with our lives, starving for wisdom, but terrified of what will happen if we find it. I’m not excluding myself from that description, either—when I’m on Twitter or Facebook, I tend to scroll right past links to important news and intelligent editorials, instead lighting on the jokes (including those moronic “X will just kill you” jokes—STOP POSTING THEM, YOU IGNORANT CLODS), hoping if it read one more amusing thing I’ll feel happy. But predictably, I always emerge from the malaise hating myself for wasting another hour on the couch.

But I suppose that’s just being human: continually falling short of the divine because we’re chained to our own weakness. Continually preferring the banal things of the world to the endless riches being offered. Continually thinking that that joke about “X will just kill you” is funny.

IT’S GARBAGE, PEOPLE. GARBAGE. STOP TRYING TO BE FUNNY. YOU’RE NOT FUNNY.

I’m just saying.