【2008 Archives】

008 Archivesinternet's jargon has a nasty habit of worming its way into everyday speech, which is how you end up with late 30-somethings unironically jabbering about reheated nachos. Viral words and phrases don’t just infiltrate how we talk; they shape what we find funny, too. Joke formats, absurd phrases, and even the structure of comedy itself are now deeply influenced by the online world. Because in 2025, the internet is everything — and everything is the internet. 

As a confused old man once said: "Wow.... everything's computer."

Speaking of that guy, lately, it seems the internet finds certain phrases funny when they’re missing words. Like someone looking at a Tesla and muttering, "Everything’s computer." Online humor has adopted a cadence that echoes The Office's Kevin Malone, who famously once said, "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"

Once you notice it, it's everywhere. "Everything's computer." "Trump take egg." "Luckily, I have purse." To be clear, it's not like this is a wildly new form of comedy. We've always played with language — think spoonerisms, or the classic Airplane!line, "Don't call me Shirley."

But there’s something distinctly internet about today’s version: omitting connective tissue words like "a" or "the," reducing an idea to its most absurd and barebones form. It’s meta-comedy, laughing at how ridiculous a sentence sounds when you peel away everything but the punchline. It’s funny when Trump says, "Everything’s computer" because 1) It’s dumb, and 2) It’s somehow true. And then, soon enough, it’s a meme you start saying out loud in real life.

This bit has migrated offline, too. Just listen to your most Extremely Online friend. I'm a regular listener to So True, a podcast hosted by comedian Caleb Hearon, by my estimation perhaps the funniest human being alive and someone whose career took off online. In a couple of recent (and very funny) podcasts, Hearon and his guests riff on truncated phrases like:

• "I can't have boyfriends, plural. I struggle to think of singular boyfriend."

• "By the time the leaves change again, it'll be bad for gay."

• "They're taking gay away."

• "Where are the fat ones because we'll need to send extra team."

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Not to read too much into silly jokes...but to read too much into silly jokes, it tracks. Hearon, who is gay, is using language to deflate something serious like potential persecution. Taking something threatening and making it sound utterly ridiculous is a kind of defense mechanism. It's taking the power from the actual bad thing. Comedy spaces, beyond whatever the hell is happening in Austin, tend to lean left. So in the face of a rising right-wing administration, absurdist humor makes sense. Silly gallows humor becomes the chaotic counterpart to the earnest optimism of, say, Parks and Recreationin the Obama era.

Paring a joke down to its barest grammatical parts sharpens the focus on what makes it funny in the first place. By stripping away anything extraneous — articles, conjunctions, even logic — the punchline hits faster and harder. It’s no accident that the best versions of these jokes target political figures and power structures. The absurdity of the language mirrors the absurdity of what it’s describing.

Or maybe this is just a whole article, hundreds of words, about funny things being funny. And maybe that’s enough. As an old friend said, "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"