Is this a joke to you?

Knock knock!

- Christalle Fernandes

Who's there? No one. Jokes have moved on to “6-7” and “Jet2 holiday”. The setup is dead. So are henpecked husbands and Sardarji punchlines. Last week was Chalamet vs ballet. Next week, who knows? Welcome to humour’s brain-rot era. You get it, right?sk someone to tell you a joke. A Boomer will probably talk about how he’s such a harassed husband. A Millennial might joke about low-rise jeans and The Simpsons. Gen Zs will ask you to check the 10,000 unopened Reels they already sent you. A Gen Alpha might say something like skibidi toilet or 6-7 (and fall over themselves laughing, because the butt of the joke is you, who didn’t get it).

In 2026, we're laughing differently. Jokes are absurd, self-deprecating, and don't make sense if you aren't chronically online. So, what do we find funny now, and who are we laughing at? Pick your fighter: Bwahaha, LOL, Lmaoooo, or a string of skull emojis. Oh, yes, we're laughing at death, but not in the way you think.

The source

Then: Siddhi Palande, a book blogger, recalls spending the summer holidays with her cousins in the '90s, passing around pun books and Tinkle Comics, and making each other laugh. “We'd memorise the best puns and punchlines to tell later on, and earn a reputation for being witty.” Everyone read some version of 101 Jokes for Kids or 100 of the Punniest Jokes of All Time or Life's Like That in the Reader's Digest. Their comic heroes: Suppandi and Shikari Shambu from Tinkle Comics. The agents of chaos: PG Wodehouse's Wooster and Khushwant Singh's Santa-Banta.

Now: We're not telling jokes, we're sharing them. “Young people prefer humour with heavy visuals rather than verbal or written jokes,” says Khyrunnisa A, who created Butterfingers for Tinkle. The laughs are drawn from reaction GIFs, movie stills, everyday moments that we all thought were unique to us but weren't really, even referencing a shared annoyance:

The drama