TIL the average dad joke gets told 3.2 times per joke in a single conversation before someone actually laughs

I was bored last week and stumbled on a linguistics blog that studied joke repetition patterns. They recorded 50 family dinners and found that dad jokes get repeated an average of 3.2 times before anyone cracks a smile. The study said the joke has to land differently each time for it to work. I always thought it was just my uncle Dan messing up the punchline, but apparently it's a real thing. The blog also mentioned that timing your pause wrong is the number one killer of dad jokes. Has anyone else noticed that the third or fourth tell of a joke somehow gets the best reaction?

3 comments

3 Comments

davis.adam11d agoMost Upvoted

Did they say why the third or fourth time hits differently?

nancythomas9d ago

Third time's usually when their guard finally drops and they tell the real story.

gibson.sarah11d ago

Dancing around the issue first time @davis.adam, but later listens actually hit the real reasons they left.