“What did the candle say to the other candle?” “You going out tonight?”

Informant’s dad told it to her. He would bring it up at family dinners or at backyard barbeques. She didn’t find it funny at all, because it was a dad joke. Some people would laugh at it and some people would be like “oh my god that’s such a dad joke.” It was used as an icebreaker.

What struck me the most from this collection was the informant telling me about the varied reactions that the “dad joke” would get. The “dad joke” genre is one that has always been strange to me, because I haven’t always been able to categorize jokes into it, and people would call things dad jokes that I didn’t realize were. But I think the way the dad jokes cause reactions in people is important to analyze, because it impacts the way the memories of the joke live in people. Some people enjoy them and find them genuinely funny, meanwhile others will groan at them and find them cheesy. Nonetheless, most people will have a pretty strong stance on dad jokes, which reflects that they have a strong impact on people.