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Just found out my go-to pun cost me last week's vote
I dug through the Dad Joke Showdown archives and saw that the winner used a pun about bread that got 47 upvotes while my own entry only got 12. Turns out repeating the same 'I'm reading a book on anti-gravity' joke I use at every family BBQ is a fast track to last place. What puns have you guys found that actually pull in votes around here?
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sethhernandez2d ago
Stick with a fresher take on the anti-gravity joke if you want to try it again. I recall @robertb47 mentioning timing matters, and I think he's right, but I'd add that creativity matters even more. You could twist the punchline to something like "I'm reading a book on anti-gravity, it's impossible to put down" and pair it with a really specific post topic, like if the thread is about chores or something stuck to a surface. That way you keep the familiar setup but give folks a new reason to upvote.
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robertb472d ago
Huh, that stings. I feel your pain man. I had a similar thing happen to me at a different forum way back where I kept trying to trot out the same 'why did the chicken cross the road' variations. People just started skipping my posts. The trick I finally figured out is you gotta mix in some puns that are really specific to the topic at hand, like if the thread is about gardening you hit 'em with something about lettuces. But also I found out the hard way that timing matters just as much as the joke itself, I posted a killer pun about shadows once at 3am and got like two votes. That anti-gravity joke is a classic but yeah, you've worn it out. Maybe retire it for six months and see if it comes back fresh.
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