It’s a weird gen Z thing. The original point of the “no one” meme was to make jokes about people responding to things nobody has ever said. Subverting the punchline is a way to increase humor because it’s not expected. Misusing the meme phrase entirely sets you up to think the meme is going in a direction you’re familiar with only to be a completely different meme, thus increasing the humor. However the “no one” meme has been used this way so often that misusing it became the default use of it instead. Now the humor from it comes from the opposite, in that it’s basically a universal buildup that works for any joke. More or less it’s a beat phrase that sets up a brief moment of suspense for the punchline, similar to how comics will have dialogueless beat panels to increase the humor of the punchline.
Gen Z grew up with this kind of humor, which is why they think it’s so much funnier than older people do. Equally, gen alpha will likely have completely different humor gen Z doesn’t understand.
I understand that it’s somehow being used incorrectly, but I’m not sure I understand that a correct usage of it would be.
Isx the joke here supposed to be “nobody has ever said girl’s hands are cold”?
Because that’s a common trope in TV shows, novels, regular conversation.
If the joke is that girl’s hands are cold, why would you need “no one”, and if the joke is that nobody would talk about girls hands being cold, then clearly that’s incorrect.
I appreciate the long explanation, I just do not understand it yet and I’ve received so many different explanations of what “no one” is supposed to mean without getting any closer to what the joke is.
And I completely agree that whatever the original meaning was is essentially lost in people just put the phrase “no one” in front of any image pretending it is a setup to a joke that it is not.
That’s why I crop these images, because there doesn’t seem to be anything semantically or comedically gained from “no one”.
Put simply it isn’t a joke. It’s evolved to the point where it basically means “prepare yourself, a joke’s coming.”
It’s just a meme that got so overused that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Think of it like how 90% of knock knock jokes don’t need the setup of answering the door, it’s just a familiar setup. Why is a banana knocking on the door? Why does there need to be a door in the setup of interrupting cow? That’s what “no one” means to younger people. It’s a familiar way to set up the joke.
Edit: I forgot to mention, correct usage would be something like:
Nobody:
Me: A trillion lions could totally defeat the sun.
The joke being nobody asked, nobody cares, and I said it anyway.
Okay, thank you for the explanation, I think I understand the structure now.
It’s a non-sequitir with an extra step, and despite the setup only making sense preceding non-sequitirs, the setup is used constantly with things people commonly talk about, are obviously popular or easy to get.
I think the knock knock setup makes sense because it very clearly sets the audience in a framework, encouraging you to inquire about the situation that you interrupt by subverting expectations via a punchline.
The no one line seems more like gilding a lily, a hat on a hat, superfluous.
It doesn’t add much to a joke or non-sequitur, it’s just pointing out that this thing from left field is from left field, while of course if the statement was from left field then you wouldn’t need to explain that it was from left field.
Weird.
I understand it better now, and I appreciate your explanation, but I’ll keep cropping these as I see them.
The no one line feels too much like a kindergartener rubbing their hands together like “I have a joke for you! My joke is a statement!”
Feel free. The whole “no one” thing has gotten a bit annoying for me too, since the initial memes of it showed up well into my adulthood, well past when my sense of humor had already developed and mostly solidified. I suppose we’re all becoming old people shaking our fist at those darn kids we can’t understand. It’s just good to keep in mind they grew up in a different world with different jokes and games, so their humor is always gonna seem a little weird.
I prefer to embrace it and just use the memes even more wrong to make them cringe. I think that’s hilarious.
It’s a weird gen Z thing. The original point of the “no one” meme was to make jokes about people responding to things nobody has ever said. Subverting the punchline is a way to increase humor because it’s not expected. Misusing the meme phrase entirely sets you up to think the meme is going in a direction you’re familiar with only to be a completely different meme, thus increasing the humor. However the “no one” meme has been used this way so often that misusing it became the default use of it instead. Now the humor from it comes from the opposite, in that it’s basically a universal buildup that works for any joke. More or less it’s a beat phrase that sets up a brief moment of suspense for the punchline, similar to how comics will have dialogueless beat panels to increase the humor of the punchline.
Gen Z grew up with this kind of humor, which is why they think it’s so much funnier than older people do. Equally, gen alpha will likely have completely different humor gen Z doesn’t understand.
I understand that it’s somehow being used incorrectly, but I’m not sure I understand that a correct usage of it would be.
Isx the joke here supposed to be “nobody has ever said girl’s hands are cold”?
Because that’s a common trope in TV shows, novels, regular conversation.
If the joke is that girl’s hands are cold, why would you need “no one”, and if the joke is that nobody would talk about girls hands being cold, then clearly that’s incorrect.
I appreciate the long explanation, I just do not understand it yet and I’ve received so many different explanations of what “no one” is supposed to mean without getting any closer to what the joke is.
And I completely agree that whatever the original meaning was is essentially lost in people just put the phrase “no one” in front of any image pretending it is a setup to a joke that it is not.
That’s why I crop these images, because there doesn’t seem to be anything semantically or comedically gained from “no one”.
It’s like putting a hat on a hat.
Put simply it isn’t a joke. It’s evolved to the point where it basically means “prepare yourself, a joke’s coming.”
It’s just a meme that got so overused that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Think of it like how 90% of knock knock jokes don’t need the setup of answering the door, it’s just a familiar setup. Why is a banana knocking on the door? Why does there need to be a door in the setup of interrupting cow? That’s what “no one” means to younger people. It’s a familiar way to set up the joke.
Edit: I forgot to mention, correct usage would be something like:
Nobody:
Me: A trillion lions could totally defeat the sun.
The joke being nobody asked, nobody cares, and I said it anyway.
Okay, thank you for the explanation, I think I understand the structure now.
It’s a non-sequitir with an extra step, and despite the setup only making sense preceding non-sequitirs, the setup is used constantly with things people commonly talk about, are obviously popular or easy to get.
I think the knock knock setup makes sense because it very clearly sets the audience in a framework, encouraging you to inquire about the situation that you interrupt by subverting expectations via a punchline.
The no one line seems more like gilding a lily, a hat on a hat, superfluous.
It doesn’t add much to a joke or non-sequitur, it’s just pointing out that this thing from left field is from left field, while of course if the statement was from left field then you wouldn’t need to explain that it was from left field.
Weird.
I understand it better now, and I appreciate your explanation, but I’ll keep cropping these as I see them.
The no one line feels too much like a kindergartener rubbing their hands together like “I have a joke for you! My joke is a statement!”
Feel free. The whole “no one” thing has gotten a bit annoying for me too, since the initial memes of it showed up well into my adulthood, well past when my sense of humor had already developed and mostly solidified. I suppose we’re all becoming old people shaking our fist at those darn kids we can’t understand. It’s just good to keep in mind they grew up in a different world with different jokes and games, so their humor is always gonna seem a little weird.
I prefer to embrace it and just use the memes even more wrong to make them cringe. I think that’s hilarious.