"About four thousand captions are submitted each week via our website and Instagram. And how many of those are people making variations on the same joke? Often there's one joke that a hundred, or hundreds, of people make. "Card shark" was a very popular submission for Lynn Hsu's recent contest cartoon of a hammerhead shark playing poker. Beside being a pun (which-meh), it wasn't unique."
"If multiple people make the same joke, and it's legitimately funny, how do you decide who gets credit for it? If fewer than five people have the exact same joke, and we think it's super funny, whoever submitted the caption first is the finalist. If it's a matter of similar ideas, phrasing makes a big difference."
"For a recent contest cartoon by P. C. Vey, which featured a fish, out of the water, reading a book, someone submitted, "The light's probably better." But that isn't quite as funny as how one of the finalists phrased it, "Obviously, the light is better up here." You really have to get into the mind of the fish."
About four thousand captions are submitted each week through the magazine’s website and Instagram. Many submissions repeat the same joke, sometimes with hundreds of people using similar ideas. When fewer than five people submit the exact same joke and it is considered especially funny, the earliest submission becomes a finalist. When multiple people have similar ideas, phrasing and how the caption fits the cartoon matter more than the basic concept. Small wording differences can change the perceived humor, including getting into the perspective of the cartoon’s subject. The selection process involves comparing submissions across iterations of the contest running at the same time.
Read at The New Yorker
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