Why Do Puns Make People Groan?

Sometimes in life, I'm just trying to have a little fun with some wordplay, and the people around me aren't having it. They'd rather have no pun at all. Wait, wait, no, come back! Don't close that tab! I imagine a good portion of readers saw that and are now groaning, cursing me, or just not reading this article anymore.

Why Do Puns Make People Groan?

theatlantic.com

In my childhood, I remember puns being something that someone said to be cheesy. They smiled and said "Get it??" to a silent room and they might get food thrown at them.

As an adult somehow that changed. It's been years of puns traveling with full force through pop culture and people LOVE it.

Except me.

And now I guess I'm not alone (?) But still:

“I would say that while there are critics of the pun that are vocal, they don’t necessarily represent a majority,” Pollack says.

But this pretty much sums up how I feel

In the comedy world, she says, puns aren't exactly controversial, but she can see why some people find them annoying. “Most performative comedy, there is a message behind it, so there’s a reason to say it, it speaks a truth about life, there’s something you connect with emotionally,” she says. >“Whereas puns are totally useless when it comes to that. It’s a totally frivolous unnecessary thing to say most of the time. It usually is just to derail the conversation or to add wordplay when wordplay doesn’t belong there, it’s kind of like the annoying younger brother or sister of the comedy world.”

Useless. Frivolous. Unnecessary. Annoying.

Yes. I made this post to complain. 😅