From eye-rolling puns to corny one-liners, the best dad jokes are so bad they’re actually good. They’re the jokes that make you groan while laughing — and they never get old.
In a world where it can be hard to connect with family members, jokes are a great way to lighten the mood and create laughter. But, what makes a joke a dad joke? And why do we love to groan when dads tell them?
Humour researchers haven’t fully pinned down what makes a joke a dad joke, but it seems to involve some kind of linguistic or social norm violation. For example, a joke like “How do you find the best restaurant in town?” may violate a societal expectation that jokes should not contain sexual references. Dad jokes also appear to violate a linguistic norm in that they are pure, terminally unoffensive puns. This fact makes them wholesome and appropriate for dads to tell around their children, while it may also render them tame and unfunny in the eyes of others.
The stereotypical scenario associated with dad jokes is that kids roll their eyes and cringe in embarrassment, which the father derives amusement from. However, this is misleading because the ultimate audience for a dad joke is the joke-teller himself. Dads often tell puns to annoy and embarrass their children, and they then revel in the shameful reactions of their offspring. This type of weaponised anti-humour has a long history in Western culture and has been popularised in movies such as the infamous ‘Cruel Intentions’. best dad jokes