I bought my new wife a full set of cookery subscriptions for her birthday to help her learn to cook properly.

Original Joke:

I bought my new wife a full set of cookery subscriptions for her birthday to help her learn to cook properly. A month later she bought me a porn movie for my birthday.

Joke Poo: The Coding Curriculum

I bought my teenage son a full subscription to a coding bootcamp for his birthday, hoping he’d become a skilled software engineer. A month later, he bought me a subscription to an OnlyFans account.

Alright, let’s break down this joke.

Analysis:

• Setup: The setup establishes a seemingly well-intentioned, albeit controlling, husband buying cooking subscriptions for his wife’s birthday, implying she’s a bad cook and needs improvement. The “to help her learn to cook properly” is the key phrase here, highlighting the implied judgment.
• Punchline: The punchline delivers the reversal: the wife retaliates with a porn movie, suggesting the husband’s sexual skills are equally lacking and in need of “improvement.” The humor lies in the passive-aggressive tit-for-tat and the unexpected direction of the retaliation.
• Key Elements: Control, Implied Criticism, Stereotypes (wife as cook, husband as lover), Passive-Aggressiveness, Reversal/Retaliation, Gift-Giving as a weapon

Enrichment Attempt:

Let’s focus on the “subscriptions” aspect and the idea of learning from them.

New Joke/Witty Observation:

“He thought cooking subscriptions were the key to a happy marriage. Turns out, divorce subscriptions are much cheaper, and offer a wider variety of recipes on how to split assets.”

OR (Playing on the “did you know” format)

“Did you know that the first cooking subscription box service actually emerged in the mid-19th century in England? It was a monthly guide for aspiring chefs, often with pre-portioned spices…which, funnily enough, is about the same time that the first recorded marital spat over under-seasoned gravy was documented. Coincidence? I think not! Maybe he should have just bought the gravy.”

OR (Building on the Porn Movie angle):

“He complained that her gift wasn’t thoughtful enough, but honestly, a curated selection of instructional adult films is practically a MasterClass in intimacy. She’s just being proactive, getting her PhD in Passion. He’s lucky she didn’t subscribe him to ‘Advanced Pillow Talk for Dummies’.”

Why these work:

• The “divorce subscription” joke utilizes a darkly humorous twist on the original’s concept of subscriptions, and turns it on the relationship instead of cooking.
• The “Did you know” angle uses genuine historical information about cooking subscriptions but adds a modern, comedic overlay that draws a funny parallel to the initial joke’s theme of marital friction.
• The “Advanced Pillow Talk” joke highlights the “skills gap” in the man, playing on both the subscription and the ‘help me improve your skillset’ undertones of the exchange.