Conspiracy theory du jour

[sigma7]

Lore on The Aristocrats and the purported joke behind it. I like his theory.

My theory: this joke didn't exist before circa 2001. The actualy joke, really, is that they're making up this dirty joke, having a hundred comedians tell it, and billing it as a documentary with historical significance.

Right now, I have two pieces of, well let's charitably call it evidence. First, Penn Jillette. If anyone was going to make up a dirty joke, then fool millions of people into thinking it's a super-secret comedian thing, it would be Jillette. Secondly, I can't find any evidence that it was posted to the Web or any other section of the Internet before 2001.

The super-secret thing doesn't fly. You can't lock a joke up. Even if it started -- over a hundred years ago -- as something comedians only told each other, all it takes is one person to tell it to an outsider, and that outsider to tell it to a bunch of outsiders, and it becomes a standard joke. And it seems to me that pretty much any standard joke is going to have been put down in someone's collection of jokes on the Web sometime before 2001.

Comments

[jim-smith.livejournal.com]

What gets me about the joke is that doesn't entirely make sense. For example, if you tell a joke where the family's act is for the father to slaughter his family, and the act is named "O.J. Simpson," I'd have some vague sense of the logic there. Here, though, I have no idea what aristocrats have to do with unthinkable debauchery, so it makes about as much sense as a "Michael Jackson is fat" joke.

[mindset]

Thing is, I think I've heard this joke before 2001. It wasn't quite as vile, and I'm not quite sure the punchline was "the Aristocrats!" However, it did involve a family act that got quite disgusting, with the point that they were satirizing the upper class/monarchy/something or the other. Only problem is, I can't remember where I heard it. I've read quite a few books about Yiddish humor and/or Catskills jokes, plus I was on a BBS for a few years and read every humor section obsessively. And my memory sucks about jokes. :)

[mindset]

And here we go. From Usenet, c. 1999, a messageboard, also c. 1999, and the finisher, this joke site, which has been the same since at least 1998. And that site leads to this book, published in 1972.

As much as I usually love Lore, I think he's off-base here. :)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I do hope you've dropped him a line already....

[http://users.livejournal.com/_redpanda_/]

*considers it* Nope, I'm not buying it.