You Didn't Write That: The 5 Most Over-Used Election Day Jokes on Twitter

Some jokes are written. Even if they are stolen by other people, it's not hard to track them down and find the original source. Other jokes form in the ether. They are the jokes forwarded to you by your parents, tweeted by fake celebrity accounts, posted on Facebook by the weird guy you meet at a rave (uh, why were you at a rave?).

These ether-jokes are everywhere and you cannot escape them. On Election Day, they reach unprecedented heights. Here are the most over-used jokes we found on Twitter. Or did the jokes find us?

1. Get Off Work

Tim Tebow has everything: money, fame and plenty of women to refuse to sleep with. But it's not enough for him. He still has to resort to joke-stealing. If you ever needed a reason to hate Tim Tebow more than you already do…

I'm predicting Obama will take an early lead tomorrow… Until all the Republicans get off work. #RomneyRyan2012

— Tim Tebow (@TheTimmyTebow) November 5, 2012

The fun thing about that one is it has two implications: 1.) Obama voters don't have jobs because they are lazy and 2.) Republicans are also lazy, because they refuse to wake up an hour early to vote before work.

Either way, it's pretty hypocritical of Tim Tebow to accuse anyone of laziness when all he did was copy-paste a joke that had already been tweeted hundreds (if not thousands) of times.

[UPDATE: That's actually a Tim Tebow parody account. Regardless, I will continue begrudging Tim Tebow his success.]

2. I Just Want to Travel

The most prominent instance of this joke I was able to track down was from someone who calls himself "Retarded Dad" but whose account name is @FunnyEvil. How will you ever land a book deal if you can't stay focused while picking a username?

If Obama wins, I'm leaving the country. If Romney wins, I'm leaving the country. This isn't a political tweet, I just want to travel.

— Retarded Dad (@FunnyEvil) November 5, 2012

Whoever wrote this joke originally (I suspect it was not @FunnyEvil, because it's far older than his tweet) must be very frustrated right now. It's possibly the most tweeted unattributed joke on this list.

FUN FACT: If you scroll down far enough on the timeline, there is a long stretch where this joke is tweeted exclusively by people whose Twitter profiles are pictures of ladies' butts and vaginas. I enjoyed pretending the Twitter accounts were actually run by anthropomorphic butts and/or vaginas.

3. Hitting the Iceberg

As if Obama's first term wasn't bad enough, some joke non-writers had to bring an international disaster into it…

Re-electing Obama is like backing the Titanic up and hitting the iceberg again. Electing Romney is like hitting a different iceberg.

— Rap Genius (@RapGenius) November 5, 2012

You'd think someone who calls him or herself "Rap Genius" would be able to come up with his or her own lines, but nope!

4. The Other Side Votes Tomorrow

The next tweet comes from someone who is both a Chris Rock parody account and a fan of the HBO series Oz. Maybe it's a parody account of what would happen if Chris Rock was a fan of Oz?

Happy Election Day! TODAY. Don’t forget to vote everyone! And remember, Democrats vote today. Republicans vote tomorrow! #Forward #VoteObama

— Chris Rock 'Oz' (@chrisrockozfan) November 6, 2012

This Chris Rock may be a fan of Oz but he's not a fan of writing his own jokes.

5. Inspirational Candidates

This may be the first time Mitt Romney has ever been called inspirational…

Mitt Romney is very inspirational. He inspired me to vote for Barack Obama. #VoteObama

— Lena Haloway. (@LawrencelyJen) November 6, 2012

@LawrencyJen yelled at people for stealing her joke. It's possible she came up with it independently and that other people did steal the joke from her, but a quick Twitter search reveals that the joke is older than her tweet. It may even be older than us all.

But what's the point of trying to pinpoint the origin of these terrible, tired jokes? As far as I'm concerned, they're formed from the primordial soup of our collective brain farts. And they are not posted on Twitter by living breathing humans, but by a mysterious force that surrounds us, penetrates us and binds the galaxy together: pure laziness.

Tags: Barack Obama, Election Day 2012, Mitt Romney, Twitter