Introducing the Ajar Thread. It’s like an open thread but not 100% open. Get it? Don’t forget to not be boring.

The first time I heard of The Aristocrats joke, it was right after 9-11. Through some source or the other, I found out that the guy who played Iago in Aladdin had told one such joke (NSFW audio) after having told a joke about the aforementioned tragedy. This was back when Too Soon was An Actual Thing rather than an ironic reference.

I laughed at the crudeness of the joke, but I didn’t understand the punchline. At all. I did not get why was it funny or clever. It took reading about it on Wikipedia to understand that the (weak) punchline is that aristocrats are supposed to behave properly (or a subversion of that).

My problem was my promiscuous reading habits. At the ripe old age of 11, I’d read enough about the French Revolution and The British Empire and so on to think that everyone knew aristocrats behaved badly.

What’s a joke that you never “got”? Do you still not get it? What did it take for you to get it? Do you know why you didn’t/still don’t get it?