I think sometimes a joke is so old/tired/cliche/eye-rolling that it wraps around the back of the humor spectrum and becomes funny again in a meta- way, exactly because it IS so old and tired. Like in The Office it becomes a funny line because Michael Scott is pounding it to death despite everyone else knowing it isn’t funny.
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That’s what
Never mind.
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Was “that’s what she said” really missing from that list, or did I just miss it. That tired and sexist trope stopped being funny forever ago.
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An idea that has been on my projects list for a long while is to compose a play whereby every line of dialog is a cliche. I am supposing one could do a similar thing with this list of dead gags. This list also reminds me of my “Wordn’mores” list, that is, a list of words I avoid using whenever possible because they have been overused, misapplied, or commodified to the point that they have become meaningless. For example “weaponized” is the latest entry. My decades-old list has quadrupled just in the last coupla years, and as such is moving away from “kinda funny” and towards “unsettling”.
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There’s a major one that’s not on these lists, beginning around 2005ish, and still around on occasion today:
Fall down
Jump up
“I’m ok!”
That’s my time!
Out!
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Took a look at what I could actually see from da whiteboard and all I can say is:
“I’ll buy that for a dollar!”
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Whenever I hear “wait, what?” (or, more accurately, “wait, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?”) Or “Define…” I think of Wurster on The Best Show.
He might be the originator of these(?)
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I think they are mostly meant to be a punchline (or initiate a joke)
I used to say; “'cause it’s your BUTT!”
Over and over again in kitchens, until I got a reaction.
Louder and louder each time
It worked for me.
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some of these feel like normal phrases that are more dialect than humor; “good talk,” “hard pass.” But I get it as a creative restraint, like how Mark Twain never once used the word “very” in his writing.
Anyway, I’m a big fan of “thanks Obama” because you can put it after absolutely anything and the joke still works, it’s actually funny every time. Same thing with “in this economy?”
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There is no way in hell that I’m…
Cuts to them doing the thing.
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So many missing from the list
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That’s one of Tina’s running gags on Bob’s Burgers
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I prefer “is it Friday night already?”
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[science fiction word] [cliché irreverant response] [live studio audience laughing. It sounds fake because there have been many takes so they’ve heard the “joke” ten times already]
Forget GPT. You could write dialogue like that with a Markov chain. Some writers deserve to be out of a job.
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The thing about cliches is, they’ve been used before:
behind a paywall : (
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E.g. The Big Bang Theory.
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I watched most of Buffy/Angel back in the day (Oh Christ! “Back in the day” feels like another one). I feel like most of these lists were used on those shows multiple times over the run.
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The only one I didn’t get being on the list is “I absorbed my twin in the womb.” Was that an overused joke at some point that I just never heard?
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