infobong.com

A New York Times story says that jokes are dead. The article contends that they've vanished both from professional comedy and from daily life. I'm probably too young to remember when jokes were shared in the workplace, but, reading the article, I thought, "I told a joke on Friday."

I was drinking beers with some folks from the J-School, listening to a staff member reminisce about her youth in Austin. I said, "Hey Lou, have you heard that joke 'How many Austinites does it take to screw in a light bulb?'"
Lou said, "No. How many does it take?"
"Three, one to screw in the light bulb, and two to talk about how the old one was so much better."
Perhaps that wasn't canonical joke-telling, but I was well-received. The article also mentions "Bob Newhart's imaginary telephone monologues," which I thought of not too long ago. One day when I was teaching my "Intro to Digital Media" class, I began an impromptu telephone monologue to explain the latency and overall poor experience of using Voice-over-IP services circa 2001. As the class rolled with laughter, I wondered, "Have these kids ever heard Bob Newhart's old skits?"

I only know of Newhart's old skits from other kid's dad's comedy records and Dr. Demento. By the early 90s, when I was in high school, comedy records were a dead, if not dying, media genre. The story mentions the Internet, but I suspect other changes in media may have led to the death of jokes. In the eighties, it seemed like many cable channels used stand-up comedians to fill up their day, which may have diminished the impact of retelling jokes