Dad jokes

I don’t like the phrase “dad joke.”

The phrase “dad joke” has been around since 1987 but gained in popularity in 2008 when it was used repeatedly on a popular television show in the United States.

In 2019, Merriam-Webster added the phrase “dad joke” to the dictionary.

I know a lot of dads. Most of my friends are fathers. Not once in my life have I heard any of them make a joke that would constitute a dad joke. They aren’t always funny, and some are never funny, but none of them make the anti-jokes that constitute the classic dad joke.

Perhaps there is a subset of fathers in the world who enjoy being less than funny and take great pleasure in awful puns, but if these dads exist, I don’t know any of them.