Serious Business

Hagar

Following on from a thread yesterday, which a poster Squidgey, interrupted, I don't think it would be any harm to discuss the points he raised. For those of you who don't know him Squidgey is a stand up comedian and posts regularly in the sub-forum Stand-Up Comedy.

This is by no means an attack on Squidgey, I'm interested in people's view on the points he raised. Anyway here's what was posted.

Squidgey wrote:

Post 1
These are mostly from the 1970's - not remotely funny and not written by you.

Post 2
Sorry, it just annoys me when people cut and paste jokes and pass them around - especially when they aren't very funny and I've heard them numerous times. I never claimed to be the greatest joke creator of all time but you are welcome to come to one of my gigs if you're interested in jokes/comedy.

Post 3
But it's as if these jokes were posted in an attempt to take some form of credit for sharing them with people - without any credit being given to the original comic who created them. As if they are some kind of reflection on whether or not the OP is funny or not. I could easily start banging off posts with some Mitch Heidberg classics that many people haven't heard before, but I'd rather post something like X comedian is really good, u should check out some of their clips on Youtube.
If I want to take satisfaction in making people laugh [which I do], then I can only truly be satisfied if that is from something which I have created. Not by cutting and pasting an email I received or Googling "sexist jokes".

Yes, some of the jokes around here are old, very old but is that a problem? Looking back over the last three or four days I can see at least one poster who commented that they really enjoyed a particular joke that they had never heard before. It wasn't a new joke by any means but it was new to that poster. That's the important thing isn't it?

I think I'm a funny enough guy but I can't claim to have written a lot of my own material, I have come up with some but like most people on this forum I'm not a professional.

IMO cut and paste is fine for this forum, just format the post properly and correct the spelling mistakes. A lot of what I post is cut and paste but I search for novel and unusual jokes and cartoons where I can. I have a secret joke mine that nobody has found in the seven years I'm on this forum. I make a point of re-hosting cartoons and funny pics to protect my sources. :D

I'd love to go to some of the gigs I see posted in the Stand-UP Comedy forum, I mod there too so I read it all, but I live in the South of France and the Nitelink doesn't go that far.

Sometimes a poster will put up a joke by Comedian X and someone else will say "Hey that's a Comedian X joke". Often the OP has no idea who the material is by but still appreciates it and passes it on. This is a good thing IMHO as it's a great way of introducing posters to new comedians they may have never heard off.

We regularly have threads on here devoted to material by specific comedians, Mitch Heidberg, Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield, Tommy Cooper etc etc. Full credit is given and the threads are usually a homage to the comedian concerned.

I enjoy the YouTube clips when they are posted, God knows I subject the long suffering Mrs Hagar to them all the time. I must admit to having mixed feelings about clips from stand-up comedians. The material they have worked on so hard gets exposed to a huge audience who often never fork out a penny to go and support these guys at gigs etc.


Not all the jokes around here are new or original, even the topical ones are old topical jokes reworked a little. I can't remember that last joke I heard here that was new to me but who cares I laugh at them again and again. We get new posters here all the time so even the old jokes are fresh and new to them. It's a bit like dropping into the pub and telling jokes to your friends and hearing theirs in return. If you heard the joke before don't spoil it, laugh politely then tell your one.


This forum is not complicated, it's just about sharing the laughter.


Thought or opinions any one?

Sabre0001

I don't think there is a need to stay original, afterall people aren't really claiming the jokes as their own. As you say, Copy & Paste is fine once it's formatted and corrected. Also, that's why there are the charter rules saying no negative comments; use the rate thread function.

Fair enough if you have seen the joke already, you may have lost 10 seconds of your time (unless you're still stuck on 56kbs connection, in which case you have bigger problems ), but other people may not have seen it.

Anyways, it's only a bit of fun...

forbairt

Think it can be nice to know where jokes come from ...

But having ... my friend john just sent me this joke .. he received it from a friend as he's on a jokes list .. I've done some checking and it looks like the source of the joke is from a US corporation as thats what the email headers / forwards are telling me ...

Is going kill the fun of the joke.

Majority of the time I've no idea where a joke will come from ... it could be a tommy cooper joke ... or he could have used it once but its originally from some other dude .. in which case you get lots of debate over the origins of the joke

I think feck it just post the joke if you want to give the original author credit so be it.

I know I've posted a fair bit on an austrian board jokes I'd get via email and I had a hell of a lot of thanks form the regular people there why did I post .. fame and notarity .. probably .. or maybe it was just cus it made me laugh so why not share it. Sure I'll see the same jokes rehashed week in .. week out so be it .. you read the start and go oh I know that one .. move on ...

All jokes are fine IMO, even if i had read them before or have been re-posted.
I would not expect anyone to look trough the archives of this forum to see if a joke has been posted before.
If someone does not like a joke, dont say anything or call it old, just because a joke is a certain age doesnt mean everyone knows it.
I'm not a stand up comedian but i do dabble in the cut and past area.

patmac

Originally Posted by Squidgey

Post 1
These are mostly from the 1970's -

1970's jokes are some of the best, anyway it's probably only meself and Hagar that are old enough to know that they are from that era
[/I]

not remotely funny and not written by you.

Very few jokes on here are written by anyone even by the legendary Rocky, some of the comments are original though.


Post 2
Sorry, it just annoys me when people cut and paste jokes and pass them around -
Why, build a bridge and get over it

especially when they aren't very funny and I've heard them numerous times.
Jokes are often repeated here and I will read the classic ones and enjoy them again, although that too could be age related

I never claimed to be the greatest joke creator of all time but you are welcome to come to one of my gigs if you're interested in jokes/comedy.
No thanks, you sound too serious to me.

Post 3
But it's as if these jokes were posted in an attempt to take some form of credit for sharing them with people - without any credit being given to the original comic who created them. As if they are some kind of reflection on whether or not the OP is funny or not. I could easily start banging off posts with some Mitch Heidberg classics that many people haven't heard before, but I'd rather post something like X comedian is really good, u should check out some of their clips on Youtube.
If I want to take satisfaction in making people laugh [which I do], then I can only truly be satisfied if that is from something which I have created. Not by cutting and pasting an email I received or Googling "sexist jokes".

Good point but it is hard to know where the original material comes from, maybe we should try and credit the original source

Penn

I've posted a few of my own jokes here (mostly in the Anti-jokes thread) and some I heard from other people. But first of all, in most cases, I don't know if the person I heard Joke A from made it up, if he heard it from someone, or if he heard a similar joke and modified it or changed it.

And a lot of the time, I remember a joke that I've heard long ago, but can't remember where I heard it, or even if I came up with it myself but forgot.

I think for a forum like this, most of the time you can't credit the jokes. Lets face it, we all get emails with a bunch of stupid jokes or pictures and no way to credit them. Just, John sent me that.

Jokes from stand-up routines are a bit different though. Perhaps they should be credited. Not just because some of them are from well-known comedians etc, but lets say, Person X, a new up and coming comedian, did a gig, and someone came here and posted his jokes as his own. If I knew that they were Person X's jokes, I'd be more likely to go see him live if I liked them. If they weren't credited though, Person X (and myself) lose out.

I'm not a comedian either. I used to write into a thing on Channel 4 Teletext where you could kinda write jokes, but thats about the extent of it. But if someone started posting some of the stuff I wrote there and tried to claim it as their own, I wouldn't be too happy.

Diddy Kong

I agree with all of the posts above, most of the jokes here are old jokes or ones that have been slightly tweaked, it is only on rare occasions that there is a brand new joke.

Even some of the great Rocky's jokes weren't new jokes but I feel people still enjoy reading them as they may have not heard them in a while. I for one enjoy re-reading some of the old jokes as they pop-up as they are not always used in the pub or work.

I never thought I would actually see a serious discussion in the humour forum!

I can see part of Squidgey's argument, if they are from a comedian then it is good to know as most e-mails, forums and other joke sources do not often credit the original comedian. I know that I do not know all comedians and if I like a joke (and know the comedian behind it), then I would tend to check out the comedian and grab a DVD if available. But it is not like people here actually post up the full script to a comedians show, it’s just a few jokes.

To Squidgey: If my attempt to brighten people's day up with a few ditty's offended you, then I am sorry, but I still believe that a few jokes in a humour forum (whether from the past or made-up) can keep people happy.

Just my 2c.

Blackhorse Slim

Are these anti-jokes? I don't get any of them

Penn

Blackhorse Slim wrote: »

Are these anti-jokes? I don't get any of them

I guess you had to be there....

keefg

Who cares??

If a joke is funny then post it on the forum and cheer people up.


This may come as a huge shock but a lot of "pro" stand ups don't write their own material anyway and jokes just get recycled and retold over & over.

whitey21

I clicked onto the humour forum and read this thread!
Of course you are gonna hear the same joke again and again! They still put a on my face and the day they make me go :mad:....i'll think i might head to my vampire doctor......necks please!:rolleyes:
Lighten Up, its all good!:cool:

Canis Lupus

I've a stand up comedian mate and he's a bit mad about his jokes and those of other people. He stopped talking to a lifelong mate who seemingly stumbled upon and used the same kind of joke in a gig that he had thought of. Figured it was stolen from him....

I've been once to a stand up gig with him and I didn't like him. He laughed (and this sounds mad) at jokes in a way that suggested *aha, everyone else is laughing because it's funny, I'm laughing because I appreciate your material on a different level because we're both comedians*.

Long story short... comedians seem to be pretty anal about jokes. Or they're just anal about attributing recognition to the creator not that it matters to anyone else lets face it.

andy1249

I never claimed to be the greatest joke creator of all time but you are welcome to come to one of my gigs if you're interested in jokes/comedy.

Sounds to me like the funniest part of that gig would be watching him disappear up his own arse.

dilallio

Hagar wrote: »

Not all the jokes around here are new or original, even the topical ones are old topical jokes reworked a little. I can't remember that last joke I heard here that was new to me but who cares I laugh at them again and again. We get new posters here all the time so even the old jokes are fresh and new to them. It's a bit like dropping into the pub and telling jokes to your friends and hearing theirs in return. If you heard the joke before don't spoil it, laugh politely then tell your one.


This forum is not complicated, it's just about sharing the laughter.

I think Hagar summarises it perfectly in this.

Very few of the jokes retold in this forum are original.
Sometimes when my friends and I are telling jokes, one joke leads to another and good craic / slagging ensues. If you spoil it by interrupting saying you heard it before, no-one else wants to tell a joke. One of my friends constantly tells the same joke over & over, but we always let him tell it, cos once he has a bit of confidence, he will come up with a gem which will have us all on the floor in tears.
In this forum, I certainly don't mind reading 50 jokes which I've heard before, in order to hear a new one - that's all part of the experience.

On the other hand, if I wrote some quality original stand-up material, I definately wouldn't post it here - I'd prefer to give it to someone to use in their routines, and I would think any stand-up comedian would not use this forum to test their material.
As Hagar points out, the Humour forum isn't complicated. That's part of the appeal for myself.

Keep all those jokes coming ...

MOH

LittleNipper wrote: »

All jokes are fine IMO, even if i had read them before or have been re-posted.
I would not expect anyone to look trough the archives of this forum to see if a joke has been posted before.

One thing that bugs me a bit, and has actually put me off the Humour forum a few times, is that you'll often see the same jokes posted repeatedly, sometimes a few days apart. Sometimes verbatim with the same errors, which suggests in some case that someone's taken the joke from here, mailed it to people, one of whom has posted it back up.
Obviously jokes are going to come around again, and get re-posted, and I agree that no-one should have to trawl through the archives to see if one was posted months a go, but if a joke is posted which was posted two days ago, then either the poster missed it the first time round, isn't a regular and wanders in occassionally, or maybe doesn't bother reading any of the other jokes and posts anyway - either to bump their postcount or say look how funny I am, which is the impression I get sometimes and kind of irritates me a bit. I'm certainly not saying everyone (or even anyone) who re-posts a joke is guilty of this, it's just if you see the same joke a few times in a short space of time it seems that way sometimes.

Disclaimer: It's Friday afternoon after a long week and I'm tired and grumpy and can't persuade anyone to go for a pint, so maybe I'm overreacting.

jimmid098

I dont get it !!! a joke is a joke why would anyone be crude enough to over analise it people laugh at me all the time trouble is i dont even tell jokes:o its like it or dont like it dont make life so hard man just chill and enjoy