Let’s say my friends and I make crass jokes about our Hated Enemy: stupid people. If we don’t find similar jokes made by our Hated Enemy about People Like Us funny, is that because we’re cultish or because jokes about scientists being stupid simply don’t work? Would that explain why I’d find Godzilla Bush stomping on Science funny but not Scientist Godzilla stomping on Truth? (I’d find the latter funny if Scientist Godzilla was stomping on a Truth church; that would be adorable.)
This is a valid point: to reverse a joke you can’t just change the labels around, because jokes that apply to stereotypes only make sense when they apply to a stereotype that people know about. In your case you might try laughing at a joke about a mathematician who’s so deep in thought that he walks into traffic.
I was actually thinking of an (apocryphal) story I heard once about a physicist driving to work who absent-mindedly drove halfway there on a set of railroad tracks.
Let’s say my friends and I make crass jokes about our Hated Enemy: stupid people. If we don’t find similar jokes made by our Hated Enemy about People Like Us funny, is that because we’re cultish or because jokes about scientists being stupid simply don’t work? Would that explain why I’d find Godzilla Bush stomping on Science funny but not Scientist Godzilla stomping on Truth? (I’d find the latter funny if Scientist Godzilla was stomping on a Truth church; that would be adorable.)
This is a valid point: to reverse a joke you can’t just change the labels around, because jokes that apply to stereotypes only make sense when they apply to a stereotype that people know about. In your case you might try laughing at a joke about a mathematician who’s so deep in thought that he walks into traffic.
I am surprised you didn’t include a link to this.
I should have.
I was actually thinking of an (apocryphal) story I heard once about a physicist driving to work who absent-mindedly drove halfway there on a set of railroad tracks.