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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?
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. 😅




I think this is definitely the bottom line for me. I love a good pun. But a bad pun will make me roll my eyes and groan.
I totally agree. Puns done right can be quite clever. It's just that the good ones are few and far between.
When they exhibit an exceptional mastery of the language to further a point, I'm all for it.
Puns don't amuse me. I also can't stand hearing, "no pun intended." It's simply unnecessary to say the vast majority of the time.
I definitely say "no pun intended". Why? Because I don't want to have go through someone pointing out that what I said was unintentionally a pun. It's a preventive measure and for me personally, very often necessary. But I understand the aversion.
Ugh, especially when you're in a discussion and someone chooses an accidental pun as the focal point of whatever you're saying. Like, really? That's all you're taking away from this??