alignment

Our best estimates have it that humans have been doing language for 100,000-200,000 years, which is just an unfathomable amount of time. And though we (I) often think of people back then as some sort of dusty troglodytes grunting and pounding, these were anatomically modern humans and just as 'smart' or witty or whatever as you and me. So I think this means that we've had funny people making language jokes for longer than we've had civilization. I marvel at how many absolute gems have been lost to history, never recorded, evaporating in seconds throughout the ages.

A bunch of things (at least 2) have to align for a language joke. One (not my best) for example is a tweet I made that read "hilma klint af". The artist's name is Hilma af Klint (the 'af' is a preposition like 'von' or 'de' in other last names) and she had a very singular style and was very cool, she's been around as a concept for awhile, but in the grand scheme of things, an instant. Her existence has recently and probably only transiently clicked into alignment with 'af' being used as shorthand for 'as fuck' to modify adjectives. hilma klint af

Even though this is not a super inspired wordplay thing, I think it illustrates the chance alignment of these things. Hilma Klint af would not have made any sense 10 years ago and might no longer make sense in a few years. Moreover, it only currently makes much sense for a sliver of online people who know of her. When I make a spoonerism that fails, eg: bus ride russ bide, I sometimes wonder whether it's just ahead of its time, or I'm in the wrong subculture, etc. There are so many future jokes and so many obsolete ones. My mind starts to reel as I try to think of all these sorts of jokes flitting in and out of existence for tens of thousands of years in untold thousands of languages.