Now there was a huge wall that divided the public from the patients so the man couldn't see what was going on. Because of his curiosity he naturally wanted to see what was happening, he managed to find a peeping hole to look through.
As soon as he looked through the hole the man was promptly poked in the eye by a stick. That's when all the patients started shouting, "FIFTEEN FIFTEEN FIFTEEN!"
Joke Poo: The Coding Convention
A junior developer was being shown around a tech startup. He noticed that all the senior coders were chanting, “EIGHT SPACES EIGHT SPACES EIGHT SPACES!”
There was a strict coding convention document taped to the wall, but it was too high for him to read. Driven by curiosity, he stacked a pile of Jira tickets to stand on so he could peek at the convention.
As soon as he reached the top and started reading, the stack of Jira tickets collapsed, sending him sprawling. All the senior coders immediately started chanting, “NO TABS NO TABS NO TABS!”
Alright, let’s break down this joke and then brainstorm some comedic offshoots!
Joke Dissection:
- Setup: A man encounters a mental asylum, drawn in by the repetitive shouting. The secrecy (high wall, needing a peeping hole) builds anticipation.
- Punchline: The man gets poked in the eye, and the shouting shifts to the next number in the sequence.
- Humor Source:
- Schadenfreude: We laugh, to some extent, at the man’s misfortune. It’s harmless, silly slapstick.
- Unexpected Twist: The expectation is to find a logical reason for the chanting; instead, it’s a twisted, violent game.
- Absurdity: The transition from 14 to 15 linked to a poke in the eye makes no logical sense, highlighting the perceived irrationality of the asylum patients.
- Key Elements:
- Mental asylum (perceptions of insanity/unpredictability)
- Repetition (14, 15)
- Peeping hole/curiosity
- Physical gag (eye poke)
Comedic Enrichment:
Now, let’s use these elements to generate some new humor:
1. Witty Observation / ‘Did You Know?’ Blend:
“That joke always makes me wonder… Did you know that the human eye can distinguish approximately 10 million different colors? Imagine the possibilities if the asylum patients had access to a Crayola box. The count could go all the way up to ‘Burnt Sienna! Burnt Sienna!'”
(Reasoning: This plays on the idea of the repetition and adds the interesting fact about eye color perception. Then it humorously imagines the count being replaced by color names.)
2. Alternative Punchline (Playing on the Repetition):
“As soon as he looked through the hole the man was promptly poked in the eye by a stick. That’s when all the patients started shouting, ‘FOURTEEN… POINT ONE! FOURTEEN… POINT TWO!’ “
(Reasoning: This adds a layer of mathematical absurdity to the situation. It takes the repetition and makes it even more specific and nonsensical.)
3. New Joke Structure (Inspired by the Original):
A statistician was observing a group of parrots in a pet shop. They were all squawking “75! 75! 75!” Intrigued, the statistician calculated the mean, median, and mode of their calls. All three, predictably, came out to 75. Just as he was about to leave, one parrot suddenly shouted, “76!” The statistician excitedly grabbed his notebook. Then, a nearby store worker yelled, “Hey! Who poked the parrot with a feather?”
(Reasoning: This keeps the repetition and the “unexpected increment” element but replaces the physical gag with a mathematical setup and a playful nod to the original poke.)
4. Dark Humor Twist (Proceed with caution!):
“A man escaped from the mental asylum. The authorities were frantically searching. Every so often they’d hear distant shouts of, ‘SIXTEEN! SIXTEEN! SIXTEEN!’ They knew, with chilling certainty, they were one stick poke away from finding him.”
(Reasoning: This turns the joke into a more macabre and suspenseful narrative.)
These are just a few examples, and the possibilities are endless. The key is to take the core elements of the joke and play with them in unexpected and humorous ways.