Category Archives: Humor

Conservation of Evil

Text: Below is a interview about a folk metaphor, conservation of evil.

Interviewer: Are there any sayings for groups you’re a part of?

Interviewee: Yeah, so, uh, in the physics community, when we find ourselves trying to solve a very difficult problem, and we make, let’s say, an approximation or, we apply some technique to make it easier, it turns out that that just doesn’t make the problem easier. It just shifts the difficulty to later, and, uh, we, that’s what we call the conservation of evil, and it kind of comes from, like uh, you know in physics there’s like a, conservation laws, conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and stuff like that, and that’s just a fun play on how the problem is still as difficult as it was before, you just shifted it to somewhere else.

Context:

The interviewee is a college Senior who is studying physics. He was asked about any folk speech he knew from any academic folk groups he was in. He thought for a bit, then remembered the above folk speech. He uses the folk speech to describe to his classmates physics problems that are hard no matter what technique is applied to them.

Analysis:

The folk speech demonstrates the experience of solving a hard physics problem. While a student may use laws of physics to try to simplify the problem, there are many unlabeled aspects of questions that relate to the experience of working on a hard problem. Therefore, folk speech and jargon is necessary to explain the characteristics of the problem. This folk speech also exists as an example of moralizing physics problems. The physics problem is difficult to solve, therefore it is labeled evil. The expression also holds wisdom that is more generalizable to more areas than just physics problems. Some issues are difficult, no matter how they are repositioned.

Drake Curse Legend

Text: The interview below captures a student folk performance of the Drake Curse legend.

Interviewer: Do you have any MMA or fighting beliefs?

Interviewee: So, for, like, the UFC, I don’t know if it spans across other promotions, but, for the UFC specifically, there’s a betting system. You can see who bets what on which fighter, uh, and there’s basically this thing called the Drake Curse, wherein whichever fighter Drake, the rapper, singer, uh, puts his money on, that fighter will lose, and that has uh, only a few fighters have broken the Drake Curse, but most of the fighters who he’s bet on have lost their fights.

Context:

This interview was collected from a college student, raised in São Paulo, who is captain of the school’s MMA(Mixed Martial Arts) club after a practice. The interviewee heard about the legend from UFC fight commentary and social media

Analysis:

MMA(Mixed Martial Arts) fights inherently have a lot of randomness. One stray punch, or one awkward position can lead to an upset, so betting on fights contains a lot of risk. Because of this uncertainty, folklore is used to explain and deal with that unpredictability. Now, the winner of the fight is determined by one factor: whether Drake put his money on him. The staying power of this folk speech is evident, as even when Drake does win some of his bets, the reputation of the Drake Curse still endures. The belief is able to permeate multiple folk groups, because Drake bets on a lot of different sports. The interviewed bearer of the legend heard about it both from official fight commentary, and from social media posts. This origin showcases the fight commentator engaging in folklorism, as they take the humorous legend from the digital folk environment, where it originates, and repeat it on the official commentary broadcast.

Birthday Spanking

AZ: In my family we do birthday spanks. You get one swat for every year you’ve been alive, plus one to grow. My dad usually does it while we’re all standing around the cake before we blow out the candles.

“Interviewer: I know this is a common folk ritual, however is there anything your family specifically does to modify this practice?

AZ: Now that you mention It we make sure to do the spankings at the exact hour the person was born, in order to “spank” them into the next chapter of their life”

Context: This is a multi generational family tradition passed down from her paternal grandfather. To AZ, this is a nostalgic and grounding ritual. While the act is playful, the family takes the timing seriously. The added later of the timing transforms a general game into a practice of family law. She views the physical sensation as a necessary “spank” into her new age.

Analysis: This ritual is another example of how folklore can be localized through variation and a secular rite of passage. However, the specific modification AZ describes, performing the ritual at the exact hour of birth, elevates the practice from a general custom to a sacred domestic event. Anthropologically, this emphasizes the importance of liminality. This is also connected to sympathetic magic, and the physicality of the action in the present propels the individuals journey into the future.

Chinese Proverb

Text:

“Dogs can’t change their habit of eating shit.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student. The phrase is a well-known Chinese proverb, used across generations and regions, and the informant learned it through everyday family and peer interaction rather than any formal context. The proverb is often used spontaneously in casual conversation to describe someone whose behavior has repeatedly disappointed them. It functions as a sharp, often humorous way of complaining about someone’s character, as the phrase implies that no matter how many chances a person is given, their fundamental nature will still reveal itself. The proverb is vulgar in its imagery, which likely contributes to its rhetorical force and memorability. Moreover, it was shared in English translation, meaning some of the original linguistic texture of the Mandarin phrasing may not fully carry over.

Analysis:

This proverb exemplifies core folkloric features as it is a fixed phrase carrying metaphorical wisdom, transmitted informally across generations without a traceable single author. Its vulgarity is rhetorically strong — the shock of the imagery makes it memorable and forceful, which is also how oral traditions like this one are sustained across time. The proverb reflects folklore’s capacity to encode community beliefs and values: embedded in this saying is a culturally shared assumption that human nature is fundamentally fixed, offering a folk framework for making sense of repeated disappointment. This connects to the course’s discussion of folk speech as vernacular authority. More specifically, deploying a traditional proverb rather than plain speech transforms the speaker’s frustration from an individualized emotion state to a sense of collective, time-tested wisdom, making the claim feel less like personal opinion and more like cultural truth.




A joke about calling Shanghainese young masters

Text:
“We were at San Gabriel yesterday, and my friends joked to the coffee shop ‘Cotti Coffee’ that Shanghainese young masters like me won’t like it.”

Context:

This text was collected from a Chinese international student who is originally from Shanghai. The piece emerged during a casual outing at a San Gabriel shopping area, where the informant’s friends spontaneously used the term “Shanghainese young master” as a joke directed at her. “Cotti Coffee” is a budget-friendly Chinese chain, which also means that it is significantly cheaper than other premium brands like Starbucks, which is also the butt of the joke. The term “Shanghainese young master” originated on Chinese social media platforms, where increased information flow made regional economic differences newly visible and discussable. It is used mockingly to describe Shanghainese people who, having grown up in one of China’s wealthiest cities, carry unconscious class privilege. This privilege is demonstrated in this case around consumption habits and taste. The informant received the joke good-naturedly, suggesting she recognizes herself in the stereotype.

Analysis:

This piece shows the way folk speech born on the internet negotiates class identity within a folk group. The term “Shanghainese young master” exemplifies internet folklore’s characteristic of rapid diffusion and variation: the joke emerges from online discussions of regional inequality and is incorporated into in-person social interaction, demonstrating the collapse of boundaries between digital and oral communication in the post-modern era. Moreover, the jokes operate through Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, or the idea that class position is not just economic but embodied in unconscious tastes and preferences (in this case, coffee consumption). Choosing or refusing a budget coffee chain becomes an involuntary performance of class identity, revealing what the informant has internalized as “normal” without conscious awareness. The joke also shows the way material culture functions as a marker of group identity: the coffee brand is a folk symbol through which insiders negotiate belonging, difference, and hierarchy.