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erratio comments on The Orange Head Joke - Less Wrong
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It made me laugh, which is a reasonable proxy for thinking it's funny.
I suspect a lot of why it made me laugh is that I recognized the "twelve-inch pianist" template and spent the entire joke trying to anticipate what the analogous punch line could be, which set me up to be surprised by the punchline. I'd expect someone who wasn't trying to anticipate the punchline to not think it was funny.
I'm reminded of "What did the Zen master say to the counter-worker at Dunkin' Donuts? 'Large coffee and a chocolate crueller to go, please.' " Which got a huge laugh at the time, but you really had to be there.
I find the short version of that type of joke (something completely expected happens, in defiance of normal joke conventions) to be much funnier than the long version, for some reason. I also seem to remember there's a name for the class of jokes like that, which my friends and I spent a good twenty minutes amusing ourselves with at the time. Anyone remember what they're called? For some reason I want to call them Soviet or Russian, but I have no idea whether that's the correct label.
EDIT: Ah, my flatmate came to my rescue. Apparently they're called German jokes, after the German stereotype of humourless efficiency.
In Soviet Russia, orange-head joke tells you!
A shaggy dog story is a pretty close, but not a complete match.
Just anti-humour.
when I was in second grade the standard anti-humor joke was,
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"To get to the other side."
That was one of the first "jokes" I ever heard, and I think I was nineteen when I finally realized it was supposed to be anti-humor.
Oh, yeah. That's true. I remember being mystified by that one as a child.
Teaching jokes to children is a strange business because they seem to go through a phase where they enthusiastically tell jokes that aren't funny, as if they don't appreciate humor. It hardly matters what kind of joke you tell them.