Comedy | March 23, 2009 | 3 comments

Researchers say good jokes are harder to remember

source: http://newslite.tv/2009/03/23/why-good-jokes-are-hard-to-rem.html

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joshuaheller
Whenever anyone asks me to recall a great joke, I find myself struggling. I can usually only remember terrible knock knock jokes. A new study by Professor Robert Provine suggests that the best jokes are the ones that subvert our expectations. We're so busy LOLing, we can't remember exactly how the joke went.

Can you still remember the funniest jokes?
  1. groups:
    Comedy
  2. tags:
    Comedy,  Jokes,  Academia,  Comic Theory
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3 comments // Researchers say good jokes are harder to remember

  • ljrich
    • 0
      ljrich  

    • (Un)fortunately, I can remember most jokes I'm told, and if someone starts telling one I've heard before, I can recite the punchline in unison with them at the end (normally in my head, so as not to disturb the joke teller / audience).

      I wonder if my joke retrieval system is built upon audio acuity (what with the perfect pitch) and I'd be very interested to know whether certain professions (musicians? Lawyers? Physicists?) as a group are more able to recount jokes than others...

    • 3 years ago
  • AnnieMole
  • abbym0308
    • 0
      abbym0308  
    • Image

    • I never remember the funniest CLEAN jokes. The only ones I remember are horribly dark, disgusting and racist. And I hate that because I can never share them without people thinking that I'm a horribly dark, disgusting, racist person.
      Here's another story about how one scientist believes that jokes are universally funny because they all fit in to eight categories.

    • 3 years ago
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