Last year, my friend asked to use the one working USB port on my ageing (since replaced) computer to recharge his e-cigarette. However, I was currently using it to charge my Kindle. I then realised what a ridiculous scenario this would have been as little as 5 years ago, so I tweeted about it.
Last night my mate asked to use a USB port to charge his cigarette, but I was using it to charge my book. The future is stupid.
— Dean Burnett (@garwboy) August 3, 2014
1 year and 15,000 Retweets later, it’s the most popular thing I’ve ever Tweeted. It still keeps popping up in my timeline, and elsewhere on the net, e.g. in this post by The Poke last month.
Then it appeared on reddit. Then UNILAD’s Facebook page. Then elsewhere on Twitter, and presumably beyond. With these though, it’s uncredited each time*, except by UNILAD who went to the effort of blacking out the details of the originator but not cropping them out, meaning they’ve gone to more effort to actively avoiding crediting anyone. Classy.
Essentially, my joke’s been ‘stolen’. Others took it and presented it as their own, despite them not writing it. This practice is common (just ask anyone blocked by Cheggers) so it was eventually bound to happen to someone who had access to a high-profile media platform to discuss the phenomenon of joke stealing in painstaking detail. So, let’s begin
Proving the origins
In science, plagiarism is a big deal. Getting your research published is a painstaking process, and (ideally) involves many people, including those critiquing it. Getting published is very important for a scientist’s career. But it has to be your own work. If it isn’t there can be serious repercussions.
You can refer to the work of others, but you have to cite them accurately. All in all, science has numerous systems in place to hopefully ensure that, at the very least, those who do the work are always acknowledged for it.
Comedy and joke writing has no such mechanism. Once a joke is told to the public (via the stage, online, a pub chalkboard etc.) it’s at the mercy of anyone perceiving it. There’s no law requiring that people credit the author when relaying jokes, and there’s no guarantee that people would be able to recall that much detailed information if there were.
It’s entirely possible for more than one person to think of the same joke, and many an ego (e.g. mine) has been bruised by being beaten to the punch with a novel joke.
However, simple coincidence is often obscenely unlikely. Take my own joke; hundreds of people could coincidentally have made the exact same observation, phrased the exact same way, but the odds against that are astronomical.
But saying that, I was recently pointed to a reddit thread even older than my joke that makes very similar points. Anyone noting the similarities between the earlier reddit thread and my tweet would be well within their rights to call foul at my shady efforts. I know I thought up my joke myself. But can I prove it? No.
When it’s so difficult to prove conclusively that you thought of a joke, how do you go about taking on those who steal it?
People don’t see it as stealing?
We live in an era where everyday people often illegally download multimillion dollar films and see nothing wrong with this. So is it surprising that a simple joke is seen as something up for grabs, like blackberries growing wild on brambles? Twitter muddies the waters further. How can tweets be someone’s property? Well it turns out, they are.
The advent of emails and social media means “sharing” things like jokes and visual gags amongst thousands of people can now be done at the touch of a button. Thing is, however inconsequential it maybe, it’s still taking something that isn’t yours, without permission, and deriving benefit from it, benefit that should by rights belong to the originator.
People can get very defensive when you call them on this, comparing it to things like singing famous songs at karaoke. But if you went on stage and said “Here’s a song I wrote myself” and proceeded to sing Bohemian Rhapsody, people wouldn’t be happy. Telling someone else’s joke as your own is similar to this, but people probably don’t see it as such. A lot of obvious effort has gone into writing a song, whereas it’s not so apparent in a joke which is just a series of words. But if they’re so easy and worthless, why not write your own rather than stealing them?
Jokes have a very limited shelf life
There’s a growing problem of websites and accounts posting images and not crediting them, only for the image to go viral. The original artist or photographer then loses out on whatever revenue or acclaim the image generates for those who shared it, which, if not illegal, is certainly unjust.
It’s the same for professional comics and joke writers, only worse in a way. A familiar stirring image remains a stirring image, but familiarity is kryptonite for most jokes. The neuroscience underpinning humour is surprisingly complex, but one recurring theme is that jokes stem from resolution of incongruity. A scenario is presented (the joke) which challenges preconceptions (The man feels like a pair of curtains? That’s not right) which creates uncertainty in the brain, which is uncomfortable. The punchline resolves the uncertainty, providing relief and a new way of looking at things, thus we experience pleasurable humour and signal our approval by laughing.
As a result, if a joke is familiar, the solution is already known, and thus it can never have the same effect.
As a result, the joke’s originator, if they’re a professional comic, can’t tell their own joke as it’s now too familiar. The impact is lost, and if you try to tell a joke and fail to make people laugh, they can be surprisingly aggressive, so it’s even more ruined.
It’s not harmless, it has consequences, and is recognised as unjust
Most comics won’t object to people telling their jokes to friends, in the pub or over dinner etc.. People tweeting your jokes or sharing them online is a bit different, as potentially anyone could see them, and spread them further, without acknowledgement.
But the main problem is when big names/platforms start doing it, profiting unfairly from the efforts of others without any attempt to compensate those people.
Stewart Lee has a cutting routine about a certain famous comedian using other people’s jokes, which pretty much sums everything up. Social networking becoming commonplace has no doubt made this practice worse overall. There’s a phenomenon known as social loafing, whereby people who feel part of a group will make less effort to contribute if they think they can get away with it, letting others do most of the work. If you’re part of an online community that shares jokes, it’s much easier to just copy them than write them. It being seen as a harmless act means people are more likely to enjoy it, rather than feel remorse.
It’s even worse when people make big profit from the unfairly obtained work of others. Comics in particular depend on their joke writing and material to earn a living, but the internet means it’s easier than ever to scour the networks, looking for good material from people who aren’t household names, and presenting it on your own platform. Such people/sites (naming no names to avoid being sued) can then sit back and watch all the web traffic from people who are none the wiser but recognise a good joke, soaking up all the delicious ad revenue in the vague hope that money can fill that gaping hole where a soul should be.
It’s not all bad; high profile joke thieves are often caught out and humiliated, but only after amassing a lot of success off the back of their efforts. Success that, by right, belongs to other people.
You might disagree with all of this, you might think jokes are public property and without value. But if you think that, why would you bother to tell them to others? If you think a joke is worth repeating, then it clearly has some value, and that value, however meagre, does not belong to you.
[* = since publication of this article, the poster of the reddit thread linked too has got in touch and apologised, which is just a very nice thing to do]
Dean Burnett often tells jokes on Twitter, but rarely does anyone consider them worth stealing. @garwboy
