The Oldest Joke: Is Humor Timeless?
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- čas přidán 6. 06. 2024
- It's right behind me, isn't it?
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:19 Origins
7:59 The Anatomy of a Joke
11:01 Timeless Jokes
17:51 Old Jokes That Got Old
27:55 How to make a joke last centuries
Thumbnail and art by @sanstitre2000
( / sanstitre2000 )
Endless Thread Article about the Sumerian Dog Joke:
www.wbur.org/endlessthread/20...
Special Thanks to:
@sanstitre2000
Miles Greb (the voice of Xanthias)
Seth Richardson PhD
Paul McDonald
Jordan Pickett, PhD
Citations:
Gordon, E. I. (1958). Sumerian animal proverbs and fables: “collection five” (conclusion). Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 12(2), 43-75. doi.org/10.2307/1359157
Richardson, Seth. (2022) Polishing some Sumerian Jewels.
Russell, D. (2022, August 5). What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? no one knows. Endless Thread. www.wbur.org/endlessthread/20...
Sidebottom, H. (2023). The mad emperor: Heliogabalus and the decadence of Rome. Oneworld.
Streck, M. P., & Wasserman, N. (2011). Dialogues and riddles: Three old babylonian wisdom texts. Iraq, 73, 117-125. doi.org/10.1017/s002108890000...
Townsend, C. (2019). Fifth sun: A New History of the Aztecs. Oxford University Press. - Věda a technologie
![Eminem - Houdini [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/22tVWwmTie8/mqdefault.jpg)
Ok, I'll watch City Slickers, sorry to all the Millennials out there
That's good to hear :p
Thanks for making me feel old Trey😮💨
Ok, but don't forget Gen X.
I saw that in a theater with my father when it came out. It can't be that old. Can it?
It’s a movie?
The oldest joke is the copper sold by Ea-nasir
It was just of such low quality
He can't keep getting away with it!!
Absolute Udreaaa moment 👌
I know that “copper” he sent is a joke but I’m not laughing.
even in ancient times, people were getting fucked over by EA
The fact the world's oldest living joke might have been a young scholar saying "I had sex with your mom" really goes to show how much humans haven't changed
Imagine my surprise when “I did your mom” almost literally comes out of the mouth of a Shakespearean character
I think that was in Titus Andronicus
hobbes and russeau were wrong, THAT's human nature
"Doin' Your Mom" - raywilliamjohnson
He was behind his time.
@@macmurfy2jka Here's the snippet.
"Villain, what hast thou done?" - Demetreus
"That which thou canst not undo." - Aaron
"Thou hast undone our mother." - Chiron
"Villain, I have done thy mother." - Aaron, bedder of mothers.
One of my favorite ancient jokes is a fart joke.
The Chinese poet, Su Dongpo, wrote a poem that reads,
"I bow my head to the heaven within heaven,
Hairline rays illuminating the universe,
The eight winds cannot move me,
Sitting still upon the purple golden lotus."
He was so impressed with it that he sent a copy to Fo Yin. In response, he wrote one word on the manuscript: "Fart." Su Dongpo was so furious at this that he left his house and got on a ferry to confront him. Upon arriving at Fo Yin's house, he found a letter nailed to the door that read, "The eight winds cannot move me, yet one fart blows me across the river."
Is Song dynasty ancient?
Huh ancient shitpost
@@reithehunterNo, they are medieval. Either before or right after the Mongols.
Holy shit... this made me laugh so damn hard lmao. This is too funny. Truly a great fartpost
Lol dio in thumbnail
imagine being a historian 3000 years after the internet collapses trying to figure out an abstracted loss meme
Imagine if the only part of the internet that survived was 4chan and historians thought everyone hated women and black people
@@myspleenisbursting4825or imagine if berserk is thought to be a history book
It will be "Steamed Hams" with zero context and no one will understand it at all.
"Hmmm, I wonder what the ancients meant by Dat Boi? It's cleary a frog!"
The internet will collapse in 2025
A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks "Would you like something to drink?" The horse says, "I think not," and ceases to exist. This is in reference to the famous phrase "I think, therefore I am." I would have lead with that, but then I'd be putting Descartes before the horse.
I laughed too hard at this.
This was the worst. Thank you.
It's funny that this joke still wouldn't make sense if the reader didn't know descartes was a philosopher that said "I think therefore I am"
Oh I get it now. He said "I think not" and therefore he is not.
I appreciate that your pun worked. (Descartes = "de cart")
Now I want to see people 2000 years from now trying to decipher the "E" meme
I would be ok if one specific person now decipher that joke.
The E meme and loss
People were trying to decipher it the year it got made
What I'm looking forward to is academics 2000 years ago correctly deducing that the joke is surreal and meant to be meaningless and the general public going "oh yeah because that's not a cop out answer" like when archeologists today say that something was for ritual use.
@@SomnusLucisCaelum The Loss joke is so ubiquitous I think it would survive in archaeology
I feel like you're leaving out one important detail: the reason why it became so popular to have character say "he's right behind me, isn't he" was probably because that was once very subversive on its own. Like, everybody was used to the simpler form of the joke, so having the character be aware of the scenario was a sort of fourth-wall-break.
Absolutely obsessed with dionysus' design here, it's adorable
Artist made him breedable
@@bobbysandiegofemboy Dionysus caught me lacking.
He looks like that stoner friend who is a cinnamon bun.
Can you imagine literal Biggus Diccus walking into a bathhouse and everyone just starts applauding! That's actually fking hilarious
"LOOK AT HIS DICKK HE'S HUGE!!!!!"
He has a wife, you know
@@SuperRitz44Whats her name?
@@azlgp6333 Incontinentia...
@@FernandoRafaelNogueiraReis ...Incontinentia *Buttocks*.
(Sorry, I just couldn't leave the bit unfinished)
I was expecting the first “he is right behind me” joke have been expressed by a shocked Australopithecus before he was eaten by a Dinofelis
💀
"It's right behind me, isn't it" -Anonymous T-Rex, 66 million years ago.
if there's a dinosaur a T-rex is afraid of I don't want to know about it
@@FeascoSince they also have to survive infancy I'd imagine anything carnivorous bigger than them
@@Feasco i think the "it" is the meteor.
We complain about people who overly explain jokes, but now that I think about it, these people are gonna be a massive help for future archeologists to understand our humor
There's no harm if everyone already gets the joke. You wouldn't explain a joke if it got a blank stare from the audience and you were testing it at a comedy set, but Right Behind Me needs no explanation, and it's super common, so no harm in covering it.
@@andrewnotgonnatellya7019 Oh, I wasn't talking about the channel LMAO I'm sorry if that's how the comment came across
@@deathstorming I wasn't saying you were.
omg KnowYourMeme and UrbanDictionary are going to become priceless historical records
Exactly! I wish i could understand why “give the donkey pure wine to wash down the figs” was so funny
Love that humor hasn't changed much in a few thousand years,
I worked in Japan as a government contractor, and decided to show Borat to my Japanese coworkers. A lot of the humor just didn't hit with them, but the naked fight scene really killed it. Farts, dicks, and crude humor is really universal.
*Humans in the year 5023 that has evolved into a robotic brain in a vat:* "What is a dick?"
@@bingbongjoel6581 We can't be sure robot's from 50th century won't have dicks. Anything is possible.
Japanese culture is especially favoring of sexual humor as well. The blood coming out of your nose is a sex thing, their origin myth involves masturbation, etc
@bingbongjoel6581 and we'd find it funny too
If you look into it, one of the oldest cave paintings in the world is literally just a dick.. Which is hilarious! We've been drawing dicks on walls since we learned how to draw on walls! Humans will never change and I love that fact that in the past 10,000years, maybe longer, we've been telling very similar jokes and drawing dicks on walls!
I always thought the modern use of RBM was an anti joke. Like the expected set up and pay off is that a monster appears behind a character, and that character screams or freaks out. And the twist with modern RBM jokes are that the character is so familiar with this set up, that they expect the punchline, and aren’t shocked at all when a monster has appeared right behind them
Or, alternatively, they expect the punchline, are surprised and relieved to find that there's nothing behind them, only to turn around and see the thing in front of them instead.
Yes that is exactly what I was thinking. When a joke that is dependent on the audience's understanding of a troupe so it can have a humorous twist, then ITSELF becomes a troupe, its comedic value is eventually lost (and other, new jokes are made on top of it).
The first RBM joke might've been pretty a funny novelty but now it's just tiring.
it’s basic irony
Right, mentioning someone in a negative way only to have them overhear you is basic irony. The RBM joke is a meta joke where a character predicts the ironic situation just as the audience is liable to, because they've been trained to expect the ironic situation. The RBM joke is a subversion of expectations of dramatic irony, which then gets further subverted once people come to expect a RBM joke, like in Futurama with the "no, I'm in front of you" response.
@@Scarybug ...and the deceased horse has now been thoroughly beaten to a bloody pulp 🤣 (or maybe, in deference to the Futurama example -- to shreds)
You're not wrong though
ᶦᵗ'ˢ ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵇᵉʰᶦⁿᵈ, ᶦˢⁿ'ᵗ ᶦᵗˀ
nuh uh
Bro made a whole documentary
That's interesting!
Anyway, you promised that you'd finished scientific inaccuracies videos of Jurassic Park, so what happened to them?
@@grosboute710 Fym nuh uh
Nope, it*s on your left.
I think a good example of a joke that future historians may find completely unintelligible is the classic "Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9"
"Because 7 was a 6 offender" is a variant I've heard, and one that they probably won't get either.
THE NUMBERS ZEEBLE, WHAT DO THEY MEAN
I think the "pull my finger" will be far more baffling.
I mean. with huge amount of written record. historian will construct the phonetic of 2010's by the help of linguist and get it fo'sho.
I once saw a "she's right behind me isn't she?" Momment where during online classes our German Teacher placed us in small zoom chatrooms for every team, and one of our Team members starts going off about how our German class is stupid, how it is a giant waste of time, how German is a very difficult language that takes forever to understand and that there are languages far more useful than one only spoken in Germany, to which we heard the teacher respond "actually, its also spoken in Austria" as she had apparently joined the team's chat room without us noticing.
There's this idea that people don't take to heart.... And it's if you say something about anything or someone... They WILL hear about it. I'm the type of person who refuses to say anything I wouldn't say to a person's face for that exact reason. If I have something to say about someone, it's good manners to invite them into the conversation first.
Happened to me about 4 or maybe 5 years ago, I learned my lesson at literature, I think. By the way I completely not understand what the rant is so much about if german is easier to assimilate by anglophones rather than romance languages, that team member wasn't the sharpest huh? I'll just leave the other couple thousand reasons in my mind.
@theazteccaspian5362 oh, I should have mentioned I'm Mexican, so as Mexicans German Is super weird.
it's also spoken in Switzerland and some parts of Belgium too
If the Sumerian dog joke is to be understood as a funny proverb, more than as a joke, I think the dog asking if they should just open their eyes makes the most sense out of all interpretations. "If it's too dark to see, maybe try opening your eyes first".
i think it's supposed to be literal. a dog walks into a bar and says i can't see anything. He literally hit his head on the door of a tavern. "Guess i'll open this one" meaning that he expected the wall to just let him into the bar because hes a dog and doesnt know how to open doors.
That asumes that the same word for "open your eyes" is used as "open this one". I have no idea if it is, but it might not be. In my language (Lithuanian) this is not the same word and the joke would not work.
What if it was more literal, like a dog walks (bumping into) a bar.
"Damn, should have opened my eyes/the door"
@@MantasVEVO I've read about people who have studied the language suggesting this interpretation, so I assume it works linguistically.
Perhaps there was nothing to see because the tavern was closed, hence the need to open it. Could be a political commentary on a new law restricting tavern operations. I'm imagining a short-sighted city administrator declaring that all inns have to close up shop at sunset and then wondering why they can't get a beer an hour later.
Ancient humor is really fascinating for how similar it is to the modern. One of my favorite examples is the Old Norse Lokasenna, a poem in which Loki crashes a party and insults everyone there, which includes a section where Odin and Loki go back and forth with accusations that the other one is gay (it's literally worded like "You became a mare and bore foals, I dunno sounds pretty gay to me").
Another good repository of ancient humor are the clown stories of Southwestern native tribes. Coyote is a similar character from the same region. The whole shtick is "these guys are so dumb, check this out." There's even a story about the clowns trying to learn to fuck and not being able to find the right hole.
Humans really have always been like this, and I think that's good and endearing. Nice to know that someone 500 to 1000 years ago might actually enjoy a Marvel movie or a dumb low brow comedy.
Imagine showing someone from thousands of years ago a marvel movie with no context, do you figure they'd assume what's happening on the screen can't happen in real life? Considering they don't know what changes happened in those years
@@1kaz1 I feel like they'd interpret it like we do fantasy or scifi, with the assumption it's all fake. People have always had stories about fantastical machines and things like automatons, people with magic powers, even cosmic beings etc. They'd probably take the skyscrapers and cars as artistic license or fantastical visions of the future. If you got them comfortable with the idea of films at all and gave them no other context they'd probably feel like we do watching Blade Runner or Star Wars, and finding out there were realistic elements would be very jarring/surprising.
@@MysteriousAuthor99 true, it's probably an easier conclusion to reach that we figured out a way to make anything appear on a screen than to think people can actually develop superpowers AND are using them casually to act in a movie
But then again they wouldn't know what a recording is and could think it's a live feed considering they did have the concept of oracles like crystal balls
@@1kaz1 At a certain point the time and place our viewer is from matters more than what they're viewing; one culture may conclude that we have extremely advanced stagecraft in the future while another may as well assume we've opened a portal into another dimension. Like you say, these concepts have been around a long time, it's up to the cultural context of the viewer to inform the conclusion they make.
My favorite subversion of the “right behind me” joke is the one in gravity falls where Dipper says Pacifica is the worst and he’d say that to her, then she knocks at the door. The audience expects the obvious, him being really nice to her, but he just tells her she’s the worst and slams the door in her face. Subverts the joke from the bottom up which is so unexpected of a kids show where the humor is normally cheaper or spoon fed.
In german they translated it to him calling her a "Spoiled Brat"
I never realized that the joke was a subversion of that!
Britsh Pantomimes usually have a scene where the audience warns the hero “He’s / She’s/ It’s behind you”
17:24 His feathered-serpent wants none unless she got spans hun
"I tell you, he could not find me a woman with a buttocks four spans wide! That small-membered fool was looking all over and got so mad! ... He's right behind me isn't he?"
And indeed, he was, and his member was so great as to incite applause from all in the baths.
Then a dog walked in and said "I can't see a thing! I'll open this one..."
And then a young summerian scholar said: "Yo mama"
@@Nqsmn
Then, I shit you not, he turned himself into a pickle! Funniest shit I've ever seen.
"... the Aristocrats!"
having a long member was actually seen as shameful in ancient greco-roman culture
The sign is a subtle joke. The shop is called "Sneed's Feed & Seed", where feed and seed both end in the sound "-eed", thus rhyming with the name of the owner, Sneed. The sign says that the shop was "Formerly Chuck's", implying that the two words beginning with "F" and "S" would have ended with "-uck", rhyming with "Chuck". So, when Chuck owned the shop, it would have been called "Chuck's Fuck and Suck".
Chuck’s Feed and Seed
@@Colddirector WRONG
This entire string of comments will be utterly incomprehensible in one decade
@@Sam_Sam2 you never know, memes have a funny habit of inexplicably coming back to life, like how trollface had a (albeit mutated) revival a couple years back.
@@Sam_Sam2 I already don't understand it
"I like big butts and I cannot lie" - Hueymoc, the last King of the Toltecs.
The thing about trying to decipher ancient puns brought to my mind the Finnish comic Fingerpori, which is heavily based on puns and for all intents and purposes incomprehensible to foreign audiences. Reading a word for word English translation of a strip would produce an effect identical to reading that dog joke. In fact, here's an example: in the first two panels a man in a military uniform is writing a diary entry, which goes somethign like "Day 52: we're still pinned down by enemy fire. The loss of men is getting unbearable". In the last panel a werewolf, also wearing a military uniform, enters the room and says "hey, can you go to the store and get more beer? Also, I ate the sausage you were saving for lunch". Get it? The joke is that the word used for loss of men is "mieshukka", and "hukka", in addition to meaning loss, is also an archaic Finnish word for wolf, so "mieshukka" can also be read as "man-wolf". So the joke is that you'd think the guy was writing about his unit taking unbearable casualties in the fighting, but actually he's just complaining that the werewolf he's stuck in the bunker with is an asshat.
And that was nowhere near the most hard to get jokes. Some have reliead on such obscure wordplay that even most native Finnish speakers didn't get them and the author got enough emails asking what the joke was that he had to post the explanation in the next issue of the newspaper the strip was published in.
this is one thing that's always fascinated me about asterix. it's translated into loads of languages and translating doesn't seem to affect all the puns. i can still understand it in english
@@sidarthur8706 Probably because French and English share a ton of Latin-derived vocabulary, so there's a far better chance of a pun working in both languages.
I like how you gave RBM an acronym and then used it like one more time in the whole video after that lmao
It's a gift to society
Boss move
This joke is similar to a joke used in pantomime in the UK. A bad character is stalking the hero who asks the audience to tell them if they see the villain. Cue hilarity as the villain keeps popping up in the background and the kids all shout "It's behind you!!"
Yesss, in the US too. Like Dora going "where's swipper?" HE'S RIGHT FUCKING THERE BITCH
Oh yes, the Dora the explorer cliche
I was thinking of this aswell when I was watching the beginning of the video
Hand-Puppet Theatre LET'S GOOOOOO.
That is very interesting! I wonder how far we can trace it there. And I didn't even know the artform was still performed!
Abraham Lincoln: “He is right behind me isn’t he”
Since I'm a day late, Trey is probably never going to see this, but MAN! I love this channel. The ever-interesting subjects, the deep dives into ancient history and characters (like Onfim), makes this channel one of my absolute favourites. Way to go, Trey!
Aww thank you so much, man! That really means a lot to me, I'm so happy you enjoy my deep dives as much as I do :) fans like you is what I do this for
Reading this and seeing "one reply" below it with Trey's pfp next to it feels like a positive visual spin on RBM to me if you squint.
Btw, the "problem" in Marvel Movies is not the presence of humor per se. It's the timing where there can almost be no seriousness or tension without a mediocre joke following instantly, taking away every form of significance or sincerity. Maybe not always (especially not in early movies), but more and more common in the last few years imo.
Yeah, perhaps it's become something they feel is a trademark style for them, but it really does read a bit weirdly? Not sure if it's down to lack of confidence in one's own storytelling skills ("let's throw a joke in just in case people aren't connecting to the characters"), or the thinness of the underlying plots ("need lots of quips to pad this out"), or an over-confidence in the universal appeal of bathos, or just part of a postmodern aesthetic that avoids taking anything even slightly seriously, or what...? Feels pretty cringe to me tbh.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 It's because it's something that no real person would say and is thus generally emblematic of the fairly poor writing in Marvel movies, and their assembly line production style that relies on these kinds of formulas. The joke is a meta joke about how common it is in fiction for a character to be talking about X and then X appears behind them, whether that's their manager or the bad guy. However this scenario basically never happens irl so a character who we the audience are supposed to treat as a real person would never have any reason to say that, a character would only say that if seemingly they have some sort of meta knowledge about being in a story. This obviously instantly kills the audience's suspension of disbelief because we can no longer treat them as a real character and thus it basically kills all the tension. Marvel stories are all fairly basic action stories so the outcome is never actually in doubt, we know the good guys will win, so the tension in them is based entirely on the audience's suspension of disbelief and their empathy with the characters. But if a character(s) stops acting like a real person and breaks our willing suspension of disbelief then all of that tension falls apart.
It's also just slightly insulting, if you the writer decided to include this joke because you know this is an overused trope, then why did you still include the trope? Why not just write a better stories where overused tropes like this aren't used.
@@hedgehog3180 That's a good point about the dialog & setups being 'unnatural' & thus breaking suspension of disbelief! It seems so weird to write movies that have such highly fantastical settings (presumably requiring successful audience immersion to work as an effective storytelling milieu), then to be undercutting that immersion at every opportunity via one's character interactions...?
That style of jarring people out of story flow does seem to be becoming quite popular with audiences, though, if I understand the Deadpool movies' use of 4th wall breaks correctly...? (Have not seen in person).
Wonder what the relationship, if any, is to recent wider cultural preferences for absurdist &/or ironic humour? Maybe some viewers of these movies enjoy the feeling that none of it is real, and that they are not risking emotional engagement with the material...? 🤔 Or perhaps they feel empowered by the "nudge nudge wink wink" style which suggests writer and audience are both in together on the joke of how unrealistic the movie is? Must admit I am puzzled by this one!
It's kind of a shame. Most people know that the hero in a superhero movie is usually at no risk of dying or even losing once. But for some reason them breaking the tension for a lame joke, like there is never anything at risk at all, just ruins the suspension of disbelief again. I guess they've been trying to break away from the edgy realistic hero movies from the 2000s for too long now.
I think Star Wars The Last Jedi made this exact mistake the most in recent Disney films
I really enjoyed this, thanks for making it. I can't believe the "Jamaica" joke is over 100 years old, my friends and I still come up with stupid variants of it.
Can you explain the joke to me, I really don't get it.
@@Game_HeroIt's [Did] ja make her [go?]
@@TheAlexSchmidt i read the j sound with a y sound and thats how i figured it out
Jamaican me crazy
I want to say I read somewhere that the Led Zeppelin song “D’yer Mak’er” is based on this joke
I commend your decision to run with Twink Dionysus.
It lowkey looks straight up like a woman there tho tbh lol
@@DeMooniC support femboys!
@@jacquelinevaladez8768bro is down bad 💀
Average ancient egyptian school:
- Did you know Tutankamon died of ligma?
+ Who's Tutankamon?
- Ligma balls.
Nothing is more exciting to me than a new Trey the Explainer video 🎉
Agreed
The highlights of the year 🔥
Awww ☺️ damn thank you
100% agree! Trey’s videos are almost always my favorites!
Trey the Explainer and The Budget Museum are legit the only channels I have notifications on for.
The worst part about the joke’s evolution is that it became something that’s said out loud and not acted out or illustrated.
Yeah it's a lot funnier when the person doing the shit talking doesn't realize the person they're shit talking is there, especially when they completely ignore the panicked expressions of the people they're talking to (who *do* notice the person behind them)
@@rodo1252 Do you not understand how acting works?
@@rodo1252i think they make it sound like this specific joke isn’t acted or illustrated anymore. yknow, because that’s what they said, not all jokes. which i think is just, clearly right.
@@rodo1252 no he didn't.... like, at all.
It's in the Bible for sure
You say that shoes joke is hard to understand, but the way you delivered it actually made it 100% work in a modern context, almost as if it's a parody of a "I lost my X in the war" line.
I was thinking the same thing, honestly. Trey read it in a charlie brown sort of way (think the "I got some chocolate! I got a candy bar! I got a rock..." bit). The shoe part of the joke isn't really funny or relatable to me because I was born in the early 00's, but I was like "Oh, I'm supposed to read this in the 50's Charlie Brown misfortune tone. In that case, I kinda get what's going on via context clues." Since those two comics were around during the same time, I think that's the intended tonal reading of it.
Like you said, people still use that tone today with the "lost in the war" joke, so it makes me wonder how important tone is to the context of some of these lost jokes without us even realizing it. I mean, plenty of jokes hit harder with good verbal delivery, so I know tone is key to understanding some old jokes. In modern day we only have written record of them so there's no way to know if something like sarcasm, deadpan, or overenthusiasm warps or slants the joke. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night lmao.
Isn't the joke something to do with the "double feature" sign in the first picture of the comic? Since if they take their shoes off in the movie-theater, why would it need to specify "double feature" so explicitly? It also seems that her feet (or shoes) have doubled in size... I don't completely get the joke, but Trey's explanation is incomplete for the joke to make sense...
@@Kholdaimon Hmmm… Could the "double feature" be some horrible pun about "double feet"? They look about twice the size in the last pane…
The decision to depict Dionysus effetely is something I fully support and hope to see more of.
Why? It's very likely innaccurate... He was not even gay, he was bi and even had children and a wife.
In the video it looks straight up like a women, makes no sense.
@@DeMooniC 'Effete' does not mean 'gay', it means 'effeminate'. As in he looks more androgynous here compared to the musculature of, say, Heracles.
Plenty of sources depict him as young and feminine in his beauty. If you look him up in Wikipedia, the very first image in the article is clearly where the artist drew inspiration from. The only change is that he is clothed here, instead of having his dick out like so many Greek statues.
The colored lips look less like makeup, and more like they have been stained with wine - which he was the god of, so that tracks.
All in all, this is in no way a break from canon. It is merely an exaggeration in existing details that both fit the joke (the youthful boasting followed by unmanly fear), as well as being aesthetically pleasing to look at.
I really want someone to make a channel that's just ancient/outdated humor now, like they're just standing in front of a mic with a goofy bow tie and a set of cards to refresh their memory and they're just doing ancient standup before explaining the cultural context as needed. I feel like that'd do pretty well on the internet today. It'd be pretty clippable, you know?
You are a genious
@@heinzguderian628yes
That won't happen until immortality is invented
I’m ready for the “he’s right behind me isn’t he”
"Holy Cow! Yes, his one leg is bronze as expected from the tales! But listen Lord-god Dionysus, the monster's other leg turns out to be made of B.S.!" Lol first ever "that's just B.S." joke.
Here's a full explanation of the "Jamaica joke" at 19:11. The pun is that "Jamaica" sounds like a contraction of the phrase "Did you make her?" The full joke is that MacBull thinks that O'Bear is asking if MacBull made his wife leave for vacation instead of the location of the vacation itself. A "grass widower" is a man whose wife is away on vacation or business. The "gay" part of that is using the old definition that just meant happy or joyful. So he is saying that he's excited to get a break from his wife for a few weeks.
Thanks! I was having a hard time trying to understand, English is my second language so I was really confused of why the conversation is funny. The explanation makes it better, but I still don't know how you get "Jamaica" from the question 😓
@@keyramancilla7003 something like the way people will slur (not sure if that's the right term) together the words into "did'ja make'a"
Like "did you" getting turned into "did ya" and then "did ja". People seem to often make a "ja" sound when saying "did ya". This one is something I tend to do a lot
Same thing with the second part, turning "make her" into "make 'er", then that into "make 'a". Although I think that last part is more from specific accents/dialects, like a stereotypical New York or Boston accent, something out of old movies about the mafia
Sorry if that's not what confused ya, and I just explained something obvious, lol
I think an important aspect of the ancient greek version of the joke is that it's making fun of a god. As you pointed out, this joke depends on a power imbalance where the person talking sh*t is weaker, and the entity behind them is stronger. So by making Dionysus the butt of the joke, Aristophanes was making a god look weak, which is playfully blasphemous.
And the fact that Dionysus is the god of theatre and that this play was being performed in a comedy competition in honour of him makes it even better!
That Dionysus bit was legit funny.
The old "servant is smarter than the master" thing is a classic too.
The servant telling Dionysus to kys himself made me audibly laugh
Gotta love the so called “dank humor”
For the record here in Greece, every summer productions of Aristophanes are played to full theaters. The jokes still ring true here.
that's fascinating... a 2000+ year old play still regularly being shown. stories older than jesus and in fact, older than the earliest estimate for the canonized old testament (200 BCE)
@@Colddirector You see it in a lot of places, in Scandinavia you'll regularly find various reproduction of Norse Mythology and a majority of them are comedies that repeat what were probably jokes in the original, mostly jokes about Thor being a drunkard.
@@hedgehog3180 Well then... chalk me not knowing up to living in a 235 year old ex-British colony lol
I doubt modern Greeks understand archaic greek
@@diansc7322 I agree on Archaic (8-7 ce BC) but the ancient Koine dialect (1st ce BC) is surprisingly easy to understand.
The 'Jamaica' pun actually made me lol:D
Just realized that Empusa is busting the Dio's pose in the thumbnail lol. Love the jojo references like the "menacing" texts at 05:36
But why Dionysus gotta be so zesty tho 😳
Maybe I understand the right behind me joke wrong but I feel like the modern version is different than the Narnia and the even older ones. I feel like the modern joke is kind of a 4th wall break. The reason they ask "he's right behind me isn't he?" Is because they are aware that this is a typical thing that happens in stories. The older versions lack this feeling probably because it wasn't a typical story trope back then.
this seems to be the case
Yeah it evolves here and there a bit but is still similar at the core
To put it another way, the modern version is a parody or subversion of the original format.
It's only natural that common simple humor gets referenced ironically eventually as it's more known for being cliche than funny.
The "oldest version" Trey found was really just the thing that kids do to scare each other, a way older joke.
What I find fascinating about ancient jokes is that Marcus Tullius Cicero, the legend himself made a "ur mom" joke. Like, you imagine this guy as an awesome orator, lawyer and politician yet he makes a "ur mom joke"
You know Cicero is lowborn so a roman aristocrat tries to belittle him by saying "who was your father?". Then Cicero says "I can't ask the same question to you because your mother made it very difficult to answer that".
Dude, Chill!
Dear lord he DESTROYED that guy
Wasn't Cicero the dude that won muti-day public trial by insinuating that offense's wife was a harlot in such a flowery words that swung the audience (jury)?
This vid inspired me to go do some of my own digging and I ended up reading some jokes from The Philogelos, a Greek joke book from around the 4th century CE. No lie, a couple of the ones in there I remember reading in a joke book I had as a kid. Specifically ones like "[character] was out swimming when it started to rain, so to avoid getting wet, they dove underwater".
Ha! Lmao! Can I get a copy?
Calvin (stops mid-stride): "Hobbes, Is there a bee on my back?"
Hobbes: "Nope."
Calvin (relaxes, moves and gets stung) "Aaah! I thought you said there wasn't a bee on my back!!"
Hobbes: "There wasn't. That was a hornet if I ever saw one!"
That's as best I remember it at least. Watterson's twist on the old RBM trope still makes me laugh 😂
One of my favorite ancient jokes is also one that needs some cultural context:
"An Abderite sees a eunuch and a woman talking in the street. After they are finished, the Abderite approaches the eunuch and asks him: 'that woman, is she your wife?' the eunuch replies: 'no, i am a eunuch, i cant have a wife' the Abderite thinks for a bit before saying: 'oh, she must be your daughter then!'"
It still kind of works, if you just replace 'Abderite' with 'guy' or even 'guy from place where people are supposedly stupid', but even besides the cultural context of "people from that place are considered stupid" (a stereotype as old as stereotypes which could easily be replaced, at the risk of being kinda racist), you also need to know what a eunuch is, which, from my experience telling this joke, a lot of people dont.
Jokes about X region being stupid remain common to this day. In Denmark it's either Molbo, Århus or Norway. However I think what really ages this joke is that it sorta relies on old gender roles where women weren't supposed to talk to any men outside of their family, with eunuchs and clergy being the sole exceptions. I think most people today would just question why the Abderite assumed that the woman was either his wife or daughter, because that's not the kind of assumption anyone would make today. The joke really only works if you knew this was a reasonable assumption to make in the medieval world, beyond the things you mentioned. People today are more likely to assume that he was stupid for assuming that they'd be relatives at all since it's just some random dude talking to some random woman in public.
@@hedgehog3180 I think "blond jokes" became popular because it's not technically a racial group so kids can tell them without getting in trouble.
@@hedgehog3180medieval world?
@@hedgehog3180in the Spanish-speaking world it’s Galicia. The Spanish say of Andalucía, Mexicans of the capital, or others about regions of their country, but the “Gallego” seems pretty common
The only difference between modern people and people from any other time is the level of technology, they had every opportunity to be just as witty
I want the drunken femboy God...
Mfmmnnnnn
Trey is such a nerd for pointlessly researching the origin of the most overused joke... he's right behind me, isn't he?
I always thought the, “He’s right behind me, isn’t he,” was a sort of pseudo-fourth wall break that referenced the ubiquity of those scenes you’d see in cartoons like Tom & Jerry, so to see that T&J scene brought up felt quite validating. It’s just another form of lampshading; calling attention to how cliché the trope has become by openly addressing it, to the point that even the act of addressing it has become cliché.
Yeah and it's the fourth wall break that people dislike. While the trope has been very overused that doesn't somehow change by the character in question having some sort of meta knowledge about the trope and expressing it. You're still doing the same trope but now you've tacked on a joke about it being a trope, which firstly begs the question of why you did it if you know it's an overused cliche, secondly kinda breaks the audience's suspension of disbelief by having a character who is apparently somewhat aware they're in a story, and thirdly it's just not something any real person would say so if you want me to actually care about a character they shouldn't say it.
I was looking for a comment like this, yes! The joke is on the old joke 'something behind me' but by not turning and instead pointing it out "sarcastically" turned it into something that was prob very smart and fresh the first couple of times used.
But is now in it self a cliché..
Femboy Dionysius wasnt something I knew I needed
Wait, if the Sumerian word for dog (or big cat) used in the bar joke was 'ur,' then does that mean the missing context might have something to do with the Sumerian city also called 'Ur?'
The "dated humor" section reminded me of the Annotated Pratchett File. Terry Pratchett was a great author who's worth reading, but he included old British pop culture references to such a degree that the fandom had to compile all of the explanations in one place.
ngl that's a significant part of what makes his work a little difficult for me to approach
26:51 imagine if the joke is just that dogs can't actually speak Sumerian
...it's the world's oldest lolcat?
maybe the joke is that there is no joke, like it's just so absurd that it is funny. At least that's why I find it funny
@@Dell-ol6hbBefore I knew from where this joke originated, I saw it in a meme and thought it was hilarious because it made no sense (Like the deep fried E memes or B A G) and even sent it to my friend who also had no idea what the context was and she also found it funny.
Not until now am I discovering it comes from a very ancient Sumerian joke.
I love watching your videos and hearing the information you present. I think I speak for everybody when I say we all enjoy the hard work you put into the videos we know you put a lot into then but maybe like to see some more every so often. You're my favorite CZcamsr and I make it a priority to watch your videos as soon as you upload it
A fascinating video as usual. Really had my post irony brain hooked at the low-tier god meme reference at 4:51
it has just happened with me. I had lunch with my grandma, & she said that the service in the restaurant just got really better.
"of course it did, you were saying it was awful, while the waiter was just behind you."
and embarrassement kicked in.
“They’ve finally translated an ancient Roman tablet that belonged to a student of Pythagorus, it’s direct translation is “Erm….student debt” . It appears humans have always been insufferable”
seems humanity never changes
Just imagine Pythagoras' feedback on Rate My Professor
This only applies to Americans lmao we don't have student debt in my country
@@AlexVanChezlawit only applies to the US? You’re telling me no other country in the world has student debt?
Seems a little US-centric of you buddy, check yourself
@@podomusscome on, everyone knows that the only country is america. all the other ones dont matter because of, uh, freedom or something. 🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷
(joking, of course)
I have one of this moments happen IRL when I was a child. My friend was threatening to tell my crush, about me having a crush on her. She then tapped my shoulder and asked me "What don't you want to tell me about?" I still laugh about it from time to time
I got one! A brother and sister walk into the forest. Both see a terrifying ugly wolf. Brother: that looks like you (to sister)
7:40 I think the reason why this joke is so universal is because its like the most basic means of getting comedy out of dramatic irony. You know that the monster is behind them before they do.
sometimes a person creates a video about a topic you never would have thought about in your life and you get absolutely invested into it, as if the topic has laways been one of your greatest interests. thank you for the great work trey!
Trey is absolutely the master of this type of video. Their whole videography is genuinely mind blowing no matter how many times I watch them.
Dionysus got me acting up
Thanks for another great video, Trey's channel is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get!
Thank you for resurfacing Trey! I really enjoy your video style, so chill - keep 'em coming... At your own pace, you know, no rush... Two or three videos a year will do!😅
I think that sometimes, the second character in a "he's right behind me" joke isn't always the villain/monster, but fate. That's why it works with a non-sapient monster like a T-Rex, because somebody bragging doesn't insult the T-Rex it insults fate.
So the character "right behind" them is really Nemesis, catching up...? 😆 I love it!
In Britain we have the tradition of pantomime. It's a family friendly comedic play of usually a well known story (Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella etc.) that is choc full of audience participation. One of the standard things in just about every panto I've ever been to is basically the RBM joke. Character A will talk about character B, who will then creep up behind them and as an audience member you shout "they're behind you!" Typically Character A will pretend they can't hear what the audience is telling them and then act in great shock when they turn around to discover person B is right behind them.
It's common in German "Kasperle" puppet shows too
Oh no it isn't!!!
I was waiting for the pantomime reference! Seems like a stark omission.
@@SeebsL oh no it doesn't!!!
Man, Dionysus be looking kinda...
*among us noise* SUS COMMENT DETECTED
I recon the ‘right behind me’ trope is from English Pantomimes, at least the most modern version.
Dionysus looking like a SNACK.
Always
Trey's voice speaking ancient Sumerian is so soothing
Ikr
Historically accurate
Thank you for these videos. Your channel has actually inspired me to pursue a degree in anthropology. I start my first uni year this fall. Cheers, man.
The Last Toltec King had a sickness for the thickness
Him after they brought him 0 thick girls: 😭😭💔
5:53 I like how he's just like "awful monster! oh wait she kinda bad though ngl. I'd tap that."
That "shortest road to Pluto" joke could be a predecessor of the gag "What's the quickest way to get to the hospital? Walk into traffic."
I love your videos man 🎉 I’ve watched almost every one. I loved your last video about the two pyramids and the Roman general. I enjoy your story format. Great artisan
There is a brazilian historian that knows ancient sumerian and he talked about the dog joke one time. His theory is that the dog (specifically a female dog according to him) is indeed with her eyes closed, and the joke comes from the word "see" used in the original text, that in ancient sumerian could mean both the verb "see", as well as the eye itself, so when she says "I can't see, shall I open this" it has a word play with "see" and "eye".
maybe the joke is dogs just like to open things, silly dog you can't open that XD
So... Something like "I can't see with my eye! Shall I try to open it?"? And it happens in an inn because maybe the inns of old could provide medical aid? And it happens to a dog because dogs are (prresumed by the culture to be) stupid?
You have to set up that the dog is evil. All you have to do is show the dog making shifty eyes and people will know he's the villain.
@@naegling Dog in the tavern, what will he open?
@@LimeyLassen is up to the imagination of the reader, whatever it is, dogs shouldn't be opening things.
The Empusa and Dyonisius behind me joke is honestly the funniest one I've ever heard 😂
Like Shakespeare, I feel like an awful lot of the classical Greek plays' greatest enjoyability kinda gets lost when you're only reading them & not listening/watching them performed...? Plays like Lysistrata seem to be endlessly adaptable to whatever dumb political conflict is going on, and because a lot of the humour is physical, it really helps seeing it on a stage (or screen, or whatever).
Great vid Trey, your research skills never fail to impress.
This is fascinating, thank you for your hard work.
Speaking of old jokes. Isn't it weird that at least two people have, at separate events, died of jokes related to figs? Chrysippus of Soli in 206 BC, and Martin of Aragon in 1410.
I would make some jokes about figs but I don´t wanna have stranger on my conscience. Again.
that's two jokes about figs, which isn't a lot
If I had a denarivs for each time someone died to a fig related joke...
Those recorded instances were taken 1,200 years apart. Hardly indicative of a pattern, but we can be sure there were others.
The first recorded deaths in the Bible occured not long after Adam and Eve first used fig leaves to hide themselves, after all.
"It'll save a lot of money on the props department"
It's funny, I thought the exact same thing, the way the slave was describing the monster, I immediately thought "Ah, the out of range technique, best way to save money since greek theater plays" XD
I imagined them pulling out all the things he described from offstage as quick gags before trey mentioned that.
Eh maybe the bigger budget productions gave that a shot who knows
I think the great thing about this joke is that it essentially works whether or not the monster is there, if it isn't it's funny because the slave is clearly just messing with his master, who is a god, by repeating his fears back to him. If it is it's funny because a boisterous god is shown to be a complete coward, and a bigger coward than his slave since he doesn't even dare look at it. The fact that he's a god and therefore really shouldn't be afraid of anything essentially ensures that the joke works every time, especially if you're familiar with his character.
you're content is so goof and interesting. thank you for doing what u do and I hope u make a million dollars
Wonderful video. Had me interested and laughing the whole time
Having lived in Mexico and hearing the big butt joke...some things never change
Going quite a bit more modern, one of my favorite Shakespearean pun is the line in _Hamlet_ , "I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw." The explanation as I understand it is a bit complicated, but here goes: There was an existing phrase, 'can't tell a hawk from a hernshaw', meaning that they are crazy; unfortunately, the word 'hernshaw', meaning 'heron' (a bird which you could not mistake for a hawk), has been lost over time. However, the pun here is that the word 'hawk' was also used for a type of handsaw. So what was Hamlet really saying, here?
Enlighten us please. I can't think of anything but "when the wind blows in adverse to my natural state, I get less mad"
@@evennot I think the joke is that the character is trying to declare that they're not crazy/stupid but in doing so show that they actually are by incorrectly using a proverb, showing that the character is still crazy. Honestly the best modern example I could think of is (sadly) the line from Big Bang Theory "I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested".
Idk. I always understood Hamlet was pretending to be mad and teased people by leaving them in doubt whether he was pretending or actually crazy. Like when he answers “words… words…. words…” to being asked “what are you reading, my lord?”
@@pansepot1490 yes. I think Hamlet acknowledged to himself that he's not fine, and pretended to be insane for others
Absolutely loving the yassified Dionysus
Fantastic video as always not much more to say other than that you trey the explainer are one of the best creators on this platform.
I think I can undertake the dog joke. It pokes fun at the indifference of a bar regular to what he is drinking as long as he gets something to drink. Modern versions of these might be: “ Barman: What do you want? Guest: Whatever you have!” It pokes fun at just wanting to get wasted.
I read that as batman and just went with it
@@angellozano1938 Because I’m Batman!
Haven't gotten to this part of the video but, iirc, dog was either their word for blind man, or sounded similar/same word different meaning. Blind men would get free alcohol. The joke is that the man is faking being blind for free booze by taking what he sees
Hmm, in my language, we have an expression that goes like "flood your eyes" meaning, drink booze until you can't see right. Now I feel like we hold the Sumerian legacy.
no i think it's supposed to be literal. a dog walks into a bar and says i can't see anything. He literally hit his head on the door of a tavern. "Guess i'll open this one" meaning that he expected the wall to just let him into the bar because he is a dog and doesn't know how to open doors.
Trey over analyzing jokes and humor is something I never knew I needed
always a delight. fantastic video!
top tier video! really interesting and engaging to watch the whole way through. Im so thankful for Trey's dedication to researching stuff most people never think about too much. This video really made my whole day!
Examples like the dog one gives me the vibes of like loss or the deep fried memes or even fucking "among us"
I find it beautiful how cultures are so special and unique that memes/jokes can be so god damn specific and neich that sometimes fellow peers don't even get it.
Like idk, something about it that just screams the wonders of humanity
I mean consider our own bar jokes. They are basically always based on stereotypes, and even more confusing to any future archeologist they're usually about a subversion of that stereotype. Like we have an entire sub-genre of jokes about various religious professionals walking into a bar, all of them rely on stereotypes or popular historical knowledge. This joke could be the same, the dog isn't doing what it's supposed to do based on cultural assumptions.
@hedgehog3180 ohh yeah, that's such an interesting way to think about it!
Last time I heard that one, I laughed so hard I almost fell off my dinosaur!😂
ACH those drawings are so gooood!
Plot twist: some future bird archaeologist comes and looks at all are supposedly universal dick jokes and gets really confused and starts lots of arguments about it
...this is even funnier if the archeologist is a duck, and has a frame of reference predicated on growing a new one every mating season.
The Led Zeppelin song D'yer Maker is pun on Jamaica. At the time it would go like this:
"me and the lady went on vacation last week"
"Oh, Jamaica?"
"No, she wanted to go"
It makes more sense with a 60's british accent.