Memo to people who print out or forward jokes

Seriously, the Joke Is Dead - New York Times: ". To tell a joke at the office or a party these days is to pronounce oneself a cornball, an attention hog,"

I like a good joke, but this article shows why it's a dying form. One point that this doesn't address is that a joke can be used by an unfunny person to try to be funny. Because the joke is self-contained humour - its the joke that's funny, not the person telling it - it can in theory be deployed by anyone. But then you find yourself listening to someone who may or may not be funny in their own right trying mark themselves as funny by using someone else's work. And this is why the joke is dying: because it allows unfunny people to give the appearance of being funny, it forces genuinely funny people to rely on their own wit, invention and timing to win laughs without jokes. I have a friend who, when going to a meeting in Wales, tracks down and prints off anit-Welsh jokes from the Web. It's bad enough to use humour against a people, but in my eyes what's worse is that he isn't even writing his own material.

To summarise: reciting other people's jokes doesn't make you funny.