A dad-going-out-to-buy-cigarettes "joke"?

Lazy, unfunny jokes are eating shit.

Everyone’s heard this old trope about a dad going out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never coming back. The child waits there, thinking Dad will return from the store any minute now, even as decades pass. (In some tellings, the father goes out for milk instead.) Either way, the stories are the same: the hypothetical father really just used the story as a cover to abandon the family.

For some reason, this is still a thing. People think it’s funny. And not just “smile-in-your-head-in-acknowledgment-while-remaining-stone-faced” funny — legitimately funny. Online, I still see it mentioned and joked about to this day.

Now, if you haven’t seen or heard it before, I can understand your confusion. Why should this random scenario come up over and over again enough to be anything? Well, you usually see people reference it when somebody shares something about their dad. For example, imagine somebody posting a sweet old photo of her smiling dad, picking her up and giving her a big hug when she was a little girl. In response, people leave comments happily talking about their own childhood memories, until someone jokes, “I’m still waiting for my dad to come home from getting cigarettes!” Someone else might add on to it, “I’m right here, son! I’ll be home soon!” or "I'm never coming back because I hate you." Or from another, “I’m waiting, too!” Everyone laughs and votes up the unexpected (but, now, expected) comments, trying to one-up each other with ever more outlandish fake stories.

Cool. But. . . it isn’t actually funny. . .? Are people really entertained by this?

And no, I’m not arguing against the story from any kind of moral perspective. It just isn’t funny. Where’s the joke? Is it that the kid stayed waiting for Dad for decades? I don’t see where the humor is coming from. This could, perhaps, be the setup to some larger amusing story, but it never is. People just meme this simple scenario, nothing further, and find it hilarious.

Even though I admit I’m much more critical of comedy than the average person, I can usually understand what makes something funny for others even if I don’t like it. But this. . . this isn’t anything? It’s not even that it isn’t funny as much as it is the lack of any thing. It’s a very vague setup that is not relatable for most people and doesn’t go anywhere.

What’s most surprising is that we’re not finding this story buried in old comedy routines from decades ago. It’s not like the story is being told by a kindly old lady whose sense of humor is from another era. This is what the harshest, least-forgiving audience in the world (the mainstream internet, particularly Reddit and other social media) is using as humor to entertain more of the harshest, least-forgiving audience in the world! They eat it up! This audience, who regularly consumes and critiques some of the best comedy in the world, is also in STITCHES when someone rehashes the same tired, pointless nonsense, over and over again like clockwork.

What the absolute HELL is wrong with everyone? ✍︎