Turns out, some people may not get enough credit when it comes to their silly, G-rated jokes.
There’s surprisingly complex science behind the humor of one of the corniest, pun-ishing and most cringeworthy categories of humor: dad jokes. In one study, published as a preprint (meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed), researchers analyzed 32,000 dad jokes from a subreddit, r/dadjokes. They found that the funniest ones — as rated by Redditors — have a tried-and-true structure. The best tended to use puns, literalization — turning an idiom into reality — and pedantic humor to delight and torment children in equal measures.