Dad jokes: a time-honored tradition carried out by corny folks worldwide. Who doesn’t love the groans elicited by a mediocre wisecrack?
If you’re not familiar with dad jokes, you can hop over to Nice One Dad to familiarize yourself with the nuances of the genre, or just take a minute to fully absorb this prime example of the craft:
Q. Why can’t you have a nose 12 inches long?
A. Because then it would be a foot!
Yes, friends … this is the dad joke. Simple, timeless, and elegantly cringeworthy. Let’s take a look at some of the groaners told by the fathers of the tech industry.
1. STEVE JOBS
OK, so maybe Apple founder and marketing whiz Steve Jobs doesn’t immediately spring to mind when you think of humor. There’s a reason for that: he had exactly one joke, and he told it over and over through the years. What’s dadder than that?
2. STEVE WOZNIAK
The Woz may very well be the jokiest dad on our list. The Apple founder operated his own Dial-a-Joke telephone line in the ’70s. He performed The Worm on national TV. He earned a degree from UC Berkeley under the name Rocky Raccoon Clark. His less-PC jokes have even gotten him into hot water from time to time.
3. ELON MUSK
Elon Musk, the man who brought you both SpaceX rockets and Tesla cars, is fully aware of the role he plays in the Twitterverse. He routinely brings his followers pun-filled post after pun-filled post.
4. JIMMY WALES
You may be more familiar with Jimmy Wales’ face than you are with his name. During Wikipedia’s annual fundraising campaign, the plea at the top of every page features Wales’ concerned visage. Internet pranksters have gotten creative with the Wikipedia founder’s fundraising layout.
5. JEFF BEZOS
When Amazon started selling its Fire tablet in packs of six, founder Jeff Bezos couldn’t resist planting a sweet dad joke in the pages of the company’s earnings report. (P.S. Listen to him laugh and tell us that’s not a dad laugh.)
6. MARK ZUCKERBERG
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is a multiple-platform dad joke offender. They’re on Instagram. They’re on YouTube. They’re everywhere. This year, he opened his F8 developer conference with a string of “The Fast and The Furious” jokes so dad-like that he felt the need to apologize to the audience.
7. NATHANIEL BORENSTEIN
Nathaniel Borenstein, the computer scientist who invented email attachments, also spent time as a barbershop quartet singer. Why is this important? Because the world’s very first email attachment (then called MIME) was sent in the form of a song, set to the tune of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” (If you’re having trouble imagining it, click here for the original audio from Borenstein’s singing group, The Telephone Chords. You’re welcome.)
BONUS DAD JOKE: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
We know we said there’d be seven jokes, but if you’ve read this far you deserve a bonus of some kind. While Benjamin Franklin is most commonly remembered as a Constitution signer and Founding Father, he also invented some pretty nifty early tech, including bifocals, swim fins, the odometer, flexible catheters, and the Franklin Stove. His well-known kite experiment even set the stage for his invention of the lightning rod. More important to ol’ Ben than any of those things? Fart jokes.
