Are jokes pro-social acts? I guess it depends on their content and the context of their telling. It is as hard to make up jokes as design pro-social experiments. Although I love hearing and telling jokes I have only ever made up three, and one of those was this morning. Here they are:
‘Why do rabbits care about the Government’s finances?
Because they are worried about the size of the public sector burrowing requirement’
(This joke is losing its already limited appeal as HMG long since stopped using PSBR as a measure.)
Man: Doctor, doctor I am invisible until I eat my lunch
Doctor: I’m sorry, I can’t see you until this afternoon’
And this morning’s joke:
‘I have made friends with an amoeba who is into boxing and martial arts. I am trying to get him to buy my car.
It’s proving to be a hard cell’.
I know these aren’t very good but they are mine. I am intrigued as to how many other people can claim to have actually invented (rather than just rediscovered or retold) a joke.
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Stop please. Jokes aren't funny - this is an irrefutable truth, if you have any doubt read the jokes again. Matthew is quite funny when he isn't joking and perhaps so are some of these other people. Inventing these things is like saying you have invented a new kind of foul smell from your orifices - it may be true, but what virtue is there in this?
Jokes are like New Year's Eve - you are supposed to enjoy them/it, and the pressure of this makes both things oppressive and dreary - you end up getting drunk and falling out with your wife or laughing awkwardly as someone stares at you testingly.
For Laura B:
A bear goes into a bar and says "can I have ......... a drink?' And the barman says "why the big pause?" and the bear says "I'm a bear!"
Man: Doctor, doctor I am invisible until I eat my lunch
Doctor: I’m sorry, I can’t see you until this afternoon’
Not very good? This is a fabulous joke. I hope you don't mind me using it from now on.
I liked the one about the doctor.