
Once a Joke Goes Viral, Who Cares Where It Came From? (2015) - luu
https://newrepublic.com/article/122765/once-joke-goes-viral-who-cares-where-it-came
======
checkyoursudo
The idea of giving credit to original creativity, citing sources properly,
etc, can be very difficult.

I have had lots of ideas that were derivative of other people's work. Maybe
almost all of my ideas. Coming up with anything truly unique is _super hard_!

I have written a lot in my career, but most of it is for clients and courts.
Much of it is quite original in a sense, because the facts of any two
circumstances are never quite the same. However, my legal writing is almost
certainly never going to be used by anyone else to make money or take credit
that I might otherwise think should be mine. But I have made money by doing
all of this writing.

On the other hand, I used to be a professional editor and sometimes writer.
Some of that work could much more easily be used by someone else either to
make money or to be passed off as their original ideas etc. That's where I
would start to feel bothered if I weren't given credit or compensated for that
work.

But the actual work of coming up with ideas, writing them down, and giving
them to someone else to read is not really very different between those two
(or three if you count writing and editing as different) jobs! So why would I
feel differently? Why do I want credit for one, but not the other?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think you answered your own questions right there, but there is a little
more juice to squeeze: legal writing had limited domain of interest and is
just "the person who observes these fact commits them for transmission".
Whilst the other writing (it seems from how you couched it) has a cultural
aspect to it, [more] personality in the writing, broader interest and possibly
for entertainment or general education.

We value our personalities, our distinctiveness, more than we value our
characteristics that are shared with others. Anything that's creative in an
artistic way we see as being more valuable that things we produce simply by
being conduits of information -- making up a joke and telling it and getting a
laugh feels much better than telling someone else's joke and getting a laugh.

You want credit for the cultural value but not the mere ability to transmit
information, the later being something that's essential inherent in your
physical make up, the former being creative output of your personality and
more unique characteristics.

A simpler way to look at it is that if people can make money from something
then it's valued by society. You seek recompense for the value you add because
you've been trained to do so.

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NoGravitas
Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems
harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what
lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great
clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up."
Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.”

~~~
twic
The Pagliacci joke has become a nice example of remixing on Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/spacetwinks/status/965428890830344193](https://twitter.com/spacetwinks/status/965428890830344193)

[https://twitter.com/daveexmachina/status/1106964873299329026](https://twitter.com/daveexmachina/status/1106964873299329026)

Including my favourite, crossovers with other memes:

[https://twitter.com/mdkii/status/1067126458534019074](https://twitter.com/mdkii/status/1067126458534019074)

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chasingthewind
I came up with an original "dad joke" a few years ago that I was incredibly
proud of, posted it to Reddit and got many upvotes. Then later on I started to
realize that everything on Reddit was reposts and I thought to myself:
"wait...what if _my_ joke was a repost?" so I googled it and sure enough
somebody else had already invented it before me. I'm about 95% sure that I
really hadn't heard the joke before and that I really did think of it on my
own, but it was kind of obvious so there was plenty of opportunity for it to
be discovered independently any number of times.

~~~
Angostura
You can't just post that without telling us the joke. C'mon! - unless it might
dox you :)

~~~
chasingthewind
Yeah that's why I was hesitant. The joke hadn't been posted so many times on
Reddit that I was comfortable sharing it :P But here's another dad joke to
tide you over! Did you know that Sir Isaac Newton had a brother that sold
frut? Yeah his name was Fig. :D

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alexanderthe-
From Tim Ferris' Tao of Seneca:

“Epicurus,” you reply, “uttered these words; what are you doing with another’s
property?” Any truth, I maintain, is my own property. And I shall continue to
heap quotations from Epicurus upon you, so that all persons who swear by the
words of another, and put a value upon the speaker and not upon the thing
spoken, may understand that the best ideas are common property. Farewell.

-Seneca the Younger

------
Razengan
Humor is crowdsourced now.

If it’s not upvoted/reposted enough it’s not funny.

And like that Key & Peele skit, it doesn’t do you well to insist that you
created something if someone else makes it popular

[https://youtu.be/k1tsGGz-Qw0](https://youtu.be/k1tsGGz-Qw0)

(but seriously though, appropriating something without credit is not cool.)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Politicians don't credit their speech writers and no one seems to care about
that -- so appropriating things seems fine in some circumstances?

Artists don't, in general, credit the architects of buildings they draw, nor
the gardeners or horticulturalists who make other scenes they might
paint/draw. Singers don't credit the creators of life stories they write
ballads about.

[IMO the politician is not there as themselves, they're a corporate body
really, they can represent views that honestly they wouldn't hold because
their backers -- financial, moral, political, or otherwise - hold those views.
The problem with that is they don't identify the corporation they represent,
IMO they really should be giving traceable credit for all of their inputs.]

~~~
criddell
> Politicians don't credit their speech writers and no one seems to care about
> that -- so appropriating things seems fine in some circumstances?

That's typically a work for hire though. When I load up Photoshop and click on
_About_ , I don't see a list of all the developers that wrote the code. I
think speech writing is the same thing.

~~~
panic
Older versions of Photoshop do show such a list in their about menu. For
example, here's CS4:
[https://i.imgur.com/33i24Sk.png](https://i.imgur.com/33i24Sk.png)

~~~
criddell
I'm guessing that was a courtesy move on Adobe's part. I can't imagine those
people retain any rights to their work on Photoshop.

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skc
There's a culture on twitter now, of "exposing" viral tweets (usually jokes)
for having been stolen from less prominent people on the platform.

I think it's great despite the obvious pettiness attached to the practice.

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sowbug
Check out _Jokester_ by Isaac Asimov for another take on the origin of jokes.

This comment has more to do with the question posed by the headline, which I
found didn't match the article very well.

~~~
BlanketLogic
> the question posed by the headline, which I found didn't match the article
> very well

The later paragraphs do show the link between headline and the content. No?
Looks like the final straw that broke him was Lloyd's infringment lawsuite
accusing him of stealing from a film which he co-wrote.

~~~
sowbug
They're not entirely unrelated. I found the final paragraphs to describe how
the research of attribution is difficult. I interpreted the headline as
questioning whether attribution is even relevant or desirable.

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peterburkimsher
Do you want to hear a joke about UDP? I don't care if you get it or not.

~~~
acheron
An ASCII character walks into a bar. The bartender says, "What's the problem?"
The ASCII character says, "I have a parity error." The bartender nods and
says, "Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off."

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pssflops
Isn't this the driving principle behind memes? Categorize information into
some new digestible format but the author is less important than the meme.

~~~
dfxm12
No, at least not exclusively. When an someone starts making money posting
other people's work, the author of said work becomes important.

------
Intermernet
My partner came up with a joke many years ago which I have actually heard
repeated in more recent years.

It's not a good joke, but I still laugh whenever I hear it.

"what does a dyslexic zombie say?"

~~~
enriquto
is the joke finished? I do not understand it.

~~~
Intermernet
See sibling comment for underwhelming punchline. You will be disappointed.

