[jacobkg]

My take on the Dad joke:

A “Dad” joke is usually characterized by relying heavily on dumb puns and wordplay. I now believe that this is not because Dads inherently like puns but rather that two aspects of child development happen to coincide, namely:

-Between ages 2 and 6 or so children often develop the ability to giggle uncontrollably in a way that is so utterly endearing that it practically takes your breathe away. It’s incredible and addicting and pure and wholesome and wonderful. But you have to work for it because with their rapidly growing, novelty seeking brains they rarely explode with giggles at the same thing twice

- At the same age the child is learning language and acquiring vocabulary. I believe that this leads to them especially enjoying puns and silly wordplay, because it connects so well with what they are spending an enormous amount of brainpower focused on.

The enormous positive feedback loop of sometimes being rewarded with joyous laughter in response to low-brow wordplay rewires the Dad’s brain. The kid will grow out of this but some Dads spend the rest of their lives chasing the Dragon.

So, when a Dad tells a “Dad joke”, they are really trying to rekindle those giggles from when you (or their child) was 4 and found nothing more hilarious than words

[radiorental]

Dad here, I agree with all of the above with a caveat... my kids are now 9 and 11.

After a long road trip when they're farking around in the back of the car I'll start throwing down some dad jokes. They soon plead for me to stop.

There's something agonizing about processing a good Dad joke, it's now become torture for them. The deeper and more twisted the pun the better.

Maybe I'm about to reach Peak Dad?

[fknorangesite]

100%. Once they've grown up a little bit, they recognize what you're doing; the game now changes from "how can I make this kid giggle" to "how can I make this (pre-)teenager roll their eyes" with the same joke?

[annoyingnoob]

This happens almost daily in my house. I get some kind of sick pleasure from annoying them.

Kid: I'm hungry. Dad: Hi Hungry, I'm Dad. Kid: Stop it! Dad: Stop what? Kid: Why do you always do that? Dad: Because I love you. Kid: Seriously Dad, I'm hungry. Dad: And I'm seriously Dad.

[2muchcoffeeman]

It's all about the end game content.

[saghm]

Honestly, I think that almost anything that would otherwise be interesting can become tiresome to people who experience it too much. I remember reading that the Red Sox manager, Alex Cora, would video call one of the Red Sox star players (Xander Bogaerts) to have him tell his kids to eat their vegetables when they were refusing, and it worked! The kids clearly were Red Sox fans who were impressed to hear from one of their favorite players, and yet, the fact that their dad was this player's boss was somehow not suitably impressive. No matter how impressive you might otherwise be to them if you were a stranger, it's hard to avoid being boring to your own kids.

[yboris]

One of my favorite books is Inside Jokes Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind.

The gist is that humor is the "joy of debugging". Our brains are inference machines and make a lot of conclusions that might eventually end up being incorrect. If we didn't have a joy-bringing mechanism in our brains to clean up the erroneous cruft we would less-likely perform this important maintenance.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inside-jokes

[Arubis]

If I may append:

- Dad’s prior sense of humor may have included puns and groan jokes, but they were intermingled with a plethora of sailor-blushing cursing, gallows humor, and innuendo that’s not a great idea to sling around in front of a three-year-old. Dad jokes aren’t just what’s added; they’re what’s left when much is culled away.

[nonameiguess]

I don't know about that, man. I think it's just men over 35 or so no matter what. I'm 41 with no kids and love dad jokes, not to try and rekindle the feeling of feedback from a 4 year-old since I haven't regularly interacted with 4 year-olds since I was a 4 year-old myself.

[historia_novae]

I'm now at the age where puns are dad jokes because it's my dad laughing to them. It was pretty satisfaying few days ago when he was yelling "vos gueules" (shut up) at birds, to which I said "That why they're called Vogel in German", and made him laugh out loud.

[ziml77]

I'm 30 and I love dad jokes. And I hate them at the exact same time. Like I'll hate that the person said it and want to bop them over the head, but I will also chuckle or smile at the bad joke.

I love getting that same sort of pained but happy feedback from others which is why I will tell them myself.

[saghm]

I'm 28 and have loved puns about as long as I can remember. No plans to have kids, but it turns out you can get almost anyone to groan, even adults!

[le-mark]

The best is when they start making “dad” jokes of their own, back at you. I had no idea 4 or 5 year olds could do it but they can.

[plasticchris]

My kid got accused of being a little dad due to her mastery of the genre. I taught her well :)

[adolph]

Maybe you don't mean to suggest that all puns are "dumb?" For if you did someone would certainly shake a spear at you.

https://nosweatshakespeare.com/blog/shakespeare-puns/

[smoyer]

Hanging is too good for the man who uses puns - he should be drawn and quoted!

[mbg721]

Building on your second point, kids at that age are also prone to verbal misunderstandings, many of which turn out to be hilarious. So turnabout is fair play.

[smoyer]

Many years ago my father-in-law was concerned about the pressure I one of his tires. I told him not to worry because I had a tire gauge in my car and we could check it. My sister-in-law was three or four at the time and approached me wide-eyed and said incredulously "you have a tiger cage in your car? "