this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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Cars have windows. Houses have windows. So it can't be windows that makes the car go.

I swear I don't understand, and he tried to explain it to me. He said it's a double meaning with Windows the operating system but I just don't don't don't get it.

Can anyone make this understandable to me? I may have screwed up the retelling, because honestly I have no idea what the hell's going on with this joke.

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[โ€“] NotAnonymousAtAll@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would argue that:

  1. This is not actually a joke in the strict sense of the word. There is no punchline. The humor is entirely in the context.

  2. Your friend does not understand any of this and is just repeating the "joke" because other people laughed about it at some point. It has nothing to do with the Windows operating system, so if that was part of his explanation he is probably just making shit up to cover his own ignorance.

[โ€“] QubaXR@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting take, but I don't think I can agree. While typical American humor is often based on question-answer/punchline structure, many comedians managed to excel at purposefully breaking it.

Think about Joe Cera, John Wilson, Nathan Fielder even Jon Benjamin or David Cross. They are all very funny (it the audience that vibes with their style), yet usually avoid the idea of buildup-punchline.

For a more universal surreal humor you need look no further than the granddaddies of the entire school: The Monty Python crew. They often went out of their way to ridicule the idea of a punchline and were/are some of the funniest people in history.

(You could always argue that humor does not equal jokes I guess, but these were just my 2 cents)

[โ€“] NotAnonymousAtAll@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You could always argue that humor does not equal jokes I guess, but these were just my 2 cents

That was exactly my main point; but thanks for sharing your 2 cents anyway, they were still interesting.

[โ€“] AngryHumanoid@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was nothing to do with Windows, it's a sorta joke where the person telling the joke is trying to use logic to compare 2 different things, with humorous results.

A better example is an old Norm Mcdonald (I think) joke, I'll post it below.

A guy sees his new neighbor out in his backyard, so he decides to get acquainted. After introductions, he asks the new neighbor what he does for a living.

The new neighbor says, "I'm a professor." The first neighbor then asks, "Oh yeah, what do you teach?"

"Logic," the professor reponds.

"What is that?" the neighbor inquires.

"Well, let me see if I can give you an example...you have a dog, right?"

"Yeah, that's right," neighbor #1 responds.

"And you have children too, right?" says the professor.

"Wow, right again!" exclaims the neighbor.

"So, then you must be married and that would make you a heterosexual, right?'' proclaims the professor.

"Unbelievable, you're absolutely correct. How do you know all this about me?"

"Well," the professor says, "I observed there was a dog house in your backyard, so you must have a dog. I also saw bicycles next to your garage, so you must have children. And if you have children, you are probably married and if your married, you are most likely heterosexual... it was all logical!"

The next afternoon, the neighbor runs into his old friend. His friend asks if he has met the new neighbor. The man says that he met him yesterday.

"What's he like?"

"Well," the man says, "he's nice and he is a professor of logic."

"Oh," says the friend, "what's logic?"

"Maybe I can give you an example. Do you have a dog house?"

"Why, no, I do not," responds the friend.

"Well, then," proclaims the man, "that means you're gay!"

[โ€“] u202307011927@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The real joke is always in the commโ€ฆ--

We don't do that here, sorry, I forgot

[โ€“] Herbstzeitlose@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

But you added clutter to the comments all the same. Good job.

[โ€“] Lemvi@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd say the joke is probably that you are logically deducting something thats already obvious to everyone, portraying logicians as people that are far removed from reality

[โ€“] federalreverse@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

*deducing, not deducting. Also, you seem to be talking about the joke from the comments. And the joke from the comments makes fun of the man misapplying logic rather than making fun of the logician.

[โ€“] Lemvi@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nope, talking about the joke in the post.

[โ€“] federalreverse@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's just misapplied logic. No ivory-tower logicians in sight anywhere to make fun of.

You could maybe use that joke in such a way, if you actually had a logician in front of you whom you'd want to piss off.