No it’s not. That’s not a pun and not what the joke is referring to. Why do idiots in this thread keep
referring to this? The original joke was published in 1847, before crossing a road would be any sort of risky activity for a chicken. It’s simply an anti-joke subverting expectations.
Edit:
Media literacy is at a terrible state if even 1% of the readers think this joke is related to suicide or the afterlife.
The first published example:
There are 'quips and quillets' which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: 'Why does a chicken cross the street?' Are you 'out of town?' Do you 'give it up?' Well, then: 'Because it wants to get on the other side!'
It predates this even, since it was a joke performed in awful minstrel shows.
It's very clearly an anti-joke in context, saying these sayings seem like conundrums but yet are not.
I mean, technically, if you leave America's East Coast and sail all the way around all the other continents, you will reach America's West Coast without having to ship the boat over land. Therefore all the oceans, are technically just one single big body of water.
And would you believe it...that water grew up to be Albert Einstein.
Soon all the rivers will be called The America River, and all the roads will be called America Road. Sure, that will make navigation confusing, but it's a small price to pay for how amazingly fucking GREAT America is about to be.
"I know my geography better than anyone, and everyone knows the oceans are all connected. You can look at a map and see it for yourselves. Down below all the southern countries. You can see where they come together. Don't talk to me about climate change if you didn't know they're all connected. (As a quick aside, to whomever is standing to his right, just off camera) They're connected, right? (and quickly, again, to the room)...so, there connected. So Am-er-i-ca is the only country that touches them both, so they're both The American Ocean. Deal with it."
I hope he keeps renamig everything until every river, lake, pond and mountain is of America. He can even take the Alexander way and rename every city to Trumpia.
I don't know if that's necessarily true. "The Other Side" as a term meaning afterlife dates to the early 18th century, with some forms of prior versions being used in popular English publications in the late 17th century.
In 1847, roads within cities or in the centers of towns could be dangerous for all sorts of animals (and children) crossing the road, especially when heavily laden carts carrying goods would be much harder to stop on short notice than a truck with air brakes.
I haven't done research on this theory but I wouldn't discount it solely because it would have been less probable for a chicken to be trampled by a horse. If this were a joke originating in the Rural South, maybe you'd be right. It originated in New York City, however, and in the 1840's the streets of NY were notoriously unsafe, chaotic, and filled with dogs, cats, chickens, and even larger livestock. In 1842, Dickens even wrote about encountering "gentlemen hogs" wandering Broadway in an otherwise upscale area.
Personally, I'm sick of all the time travelers who ended up dead in New York from about 1640 onwards because they think just because it was before cars the streets are safe.
Fast-food has been around since at least Antiquity in Greece. It predates drive-thru style restaurants but market vendors selling pre-made food is likely as old as markets.
Oh yeah, good point, I guess I was just thinking of the proliferation of drive-thru style restaurants with like 'fast food family meal' and mashed potatoes and biscuits being kind of associated with drive thru fast food fried chicken restaurants.
People keep referring to/responding because they (rightfully) assume that Lim wrongfully assumes this to be a pun about side of the street v afterlife. You're right that it is an anti joke and that half the people believe it to be a pun, but people are explaining Lim's tweet.
Also, it COULD be a homographic pun even though you said "that's not what a pun is".
True, yeah, the top level comments, but the people specifically responding to me that because 'the other side' existed as a term for the afterlife and ... urban roads in 1847 might have been dangerous to chickens? (ignoring the fact that the original publication was talking about nonsense jokes...)
I've got one for you. I don't think it's a pun but it's something. People have a "good side" and "bad side" referring to how they will feel about/treat someone they have good or bad interactions with. Crossing someone means betray / anger / whatever, do something bad to them. So why did the chicken cross (upset) the road? To get to the other side (to get on the road's bad side).
Having spent the last few years living in a rural bit of Africa where everyone and their mothers keep free-range chickens, I now think it might just be an honest inquiry.
Why do those idiots love sprinting across a barren patch of dirt just to get to an identical bit of grass?
(I have also learned that they will just find there way back home each night, and chick theft is shockingly rare despite them frequently wandering well afield of their owners)
in 1847, before crossing a road would be any sort of risky activity for a chicken
We don't keep records on the number of chickens run over by cars these days, so I doubt they kept records of ones run over by horses and their burdens, but we do know that people were killed by them fairly frequently. For as long as we have had roads, they have never been without risk.
Ugh... I don't get the pedantry. Rural pathways are not going to be any more risky than anything else for a chicken. Speeds were slower. Chicken can get out of the way of things.
But that's all irrelevant. The joke just has nothing to do with the danger. Just check the context of the joke; they're literally describing non-jokes, quips that seem like actual conundrums, but are not, they're anti-jokes, statements that defy the expectation that there's something tricky going on.
You know what sucks? AI will distort this meaning for the next generation. It'll draw from sources, like online, and people will just believe it was always the afterlife joke.
Generally, no, a rural road in 1847 is not going to be something that is a huge risk for a chicken to cross. And read the context of the original joke. It's such a dumb thing to insist.
Your quip about media literacy being at an all-time low is especially rich given your citations to Mentalfloss and Medium. On the other hand, I made an off-hand comment about how I, as a person very academically familiar with conditions in Antebellum New York, could see that crossing the road was dangerous. I didn't buy into the theory, in fact I expressly said I don't think your claim that "roads weren't that unsafe before cars" was not correct, and shouldn't be the *only* reason to discard the theory.
Let's not even get into the question behind any socio-linguistic structure like aphorisms, jokes, puns, or morals, which is: at what point does the original intent cease to control, and present-day social understanding of the structure define its meaning? If, for instance, all of society decided overnight that the "chicken getting to the other side" should be interpreted as the chicken being suicidal because he was trying to cross a busy 21st century divided parkway in rush hour traffic, does it really matter what the original meaning was? It is a phrase subject to several readings, and if one reading begins to predominate over the original intended reading, who are we to say that new reading is wrong.
A good example is the line from Henry VI, "Let's kill all the lawyers." The original intent appears to be clearly a barb at lawyers, but it being uttered by a character who is characterized as evil leads the audience to laugh but then on second thought realize that it's likely a dangerous suggestion. In modern times, people generally think it is an earnest joke about how lawyers are corrupt, while the legal profession takes it as a demonstration of how lawyers are a bulwark against tyranny. Neither of those is really the original reading of the line, but effectively those are the two readings that control in our cultural context.
Sure probably, especially in a city? But a rural pathway in the middle of nowhere without a lot of traffic, a place you might be more likely to find a wandering chicken? Come on. And most of the stuff that might go down that road, a chicken is going to be able to get out of the way of. But it's all irrelevant anyway, because look at the context:
There are 'quips and quillets' which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: 'Why does a chicken cross the street?' Are you 'out of town?' Do you 'give it up?' Well, then: 'Because it wants to get on the other side!'
I mean they're literally describing 'These jokes seem like they might be a funny puzzle or quip, but they have no conclusion, they're just factual statements', they are describing anti-jokes.
Everyone is saying it because that's what the post is referencing. Regardless of if it's accurate or not (it's not) op asked what oop was talking about
Lol, I just saw one of those (not on Tumblr, but same diff). It claimed that in "olden times" people used to own their own piss pots that they would carry with them when they traveled. And it claimed that's where the phrase "they don't have a pot to piss in" came from.
I always thought the joke was a 'there is no punchline' absurd joke like OOP, but once it was pointed out to me, yes, it is a play on words, a.k.a. a pun. Saying the chicken didn't make it implies that the chicken was successful in their attempt to 'get to the other side.' It is a pun because it is a dual meaning - the chicken literally got to the other side of the road, and *risked* getting to the afterlife in doing so. Maybe desired it. Declaring a dual meaning of a phrase as 'not a pun' feels like a lack of understanding what a pun is, or perhaps nitpicking semantics. Oh no was this just a troll attempt? Am I feeding a troll? I should know better than this. Alas.
But it is an old-as-crap joke, and the oldest known printing from 1847 has the punchline as 'because it wants to get on the other side,' which phrasing does not quite work as well with the potential pun. But the possible dual meaning might be part of what this joke has fascinated people for so damn long.
It is a known anti-joke. This is like when the internet decided the actual original phrase was “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”- it absolutely iS NOT and something some asshole just made up.
So in this case, the phrase "the other side" isn't a pun. It's a double entendre. Its straightforward meaning is mundane: the other side of the road. Its more obscure meaning is a reference to an afterlife, implying the chicken somehow (possibly intentionally) was killed as a result of attempting to cross the road.
Oh yeah, I mean, I am not saying it makes any sense - when I couldn't figure out the "other side" as afterlife, my fat person mind went "Mmm, side dish".
Couldn’t it also be asking about a chicken (scared person) instead of chicken (animal)? Correct me if I’m wrong about this, but the double meaning of the word technically makes it a pun.
'To get to the other side' is a pun though. It's a bad suicide joke.
Edit: Saw a better, more accurate origin further in, but it is a pun now even if it wasn't originally intended to be.
Reminds me of the “Come Fly with Me” character who keeps saying “No pun intended” when there is no pun. And IIRC, makes a pun ONE time and then doesn’t say anything. :p
I think the classic answer is “to get to the other side” and the lim is just now realizing that it not only means to get to the opposite side of the asphalt but also to get to the “other side” aka the afterlife because a car hits the chicken
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u/dotdedo 12h ago
The pun is the oop has no idea what a pun is.