Nobody does jokes about airline food anymore, because audiences see those types of jokes as cliche. That got me thinking, what are some other jokes (in stand-up, in shows, in movies, etc.) that have been retired, or that should be retired?
Wife is out of town, and the husband has to do the cooking, and everything goes wrong. This joke doesn't work anymore because hardly anyone cooks a meal from scratch anymore. Plus, everyone knows it's an old bit. (Even the Dick Van Dyke Show made a joke about what an "old" joke that was.)
(Edit: Okay, I was JUST talking about this, and now I just saw a trailer for the new movie "The Breadwinner," which is entirely based on this one joke! Seriously???)
Implying or insinuating that a guy is gay. It's only funny you assume that all gay men are supposed to be closeted, or that the TV/movie censors won't allow gay portrayals on screen, because then you "slipped one past the censors." Once you have openly gay characters in movies and shows, dropping "hints" doesn't make sense anymore.
Jokes about old people's fashions or young people's fashions. They don't really make sense anymore, because all the old fashions keep cycling around and coming back into style, so you never know what's going to make a comeback next. "Can you believe we used to..." and there's a young person wearing the same thing. "Can you believe the young people are..." and there's an old person who used to wear the same thing.
Mother-in-law jokes. Just because they're hacky and predictable.
Words that "sound funny." You usually don't hear this on stage, but I have seen some comedians actually get on television with a bit that is basically "this is a weird-sounding word," and then prove that point by repeating the word over and over in a silly voice. It's a cheat, because ANY word is going to "sound weird" if you do that.
Jokes about how there are "too many" Starbucks'. It kind of worked when it was a new company and was opening up a lot of new locations, but nowadays, it had just settled in as one of the many franchises that people are used to seeing, like McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts.
Nerds using a computer. It doesn't work now that everything is computerized.
That joke where a character sees an Asian guy and tries speaking Japanese to him, and he's like, "Sorry, I don't speak Japanese." No modern audience would see an Asian person and assume he speaks Japanese.
A man mistakes a woman for a man because she's wearing a hat, then she lets her hair down, and he's like, "you're a girl???" (The weird thing about this one is that this joke was being used in movies at the same time that a lot of men had long hair, and a lot of women had short hair.)
Jokes about how men never pull over and ask for directions. The joke doesn't work if everyone's car has a GPS system.
Someone mentions a blonde Asian. The joke is that there's no such thing as a blonde Asian. It doesn't work anymore, because hair coloring is now super common among Asians, especially in Japan and South Korea. (I guess you could make the joke make sense if you said "naturally blonde," but even then, it's kind of pointless.)
Someone mentions a "lesbian trapped in a man's body." This joke is based on the audience's assumption that all cross-dressing men are attracted only to men, except that no one really thinks that anymore, so the joke just falls apart.
Any remark about not liking rap music. Back in the 1990s, rap was just starting to become mainstream, and it started getting some backlash from people who just wanted to be counter-cultural or anti-current-trends or show that they were "old" and don't get the new music. (And maybe a few racists thrown in there, because rap was mostly seen as "black" music.) Nowadays, rap and hip-hop are just as established in the mainstream as country or metal. (Plus, not all hip-hop artists are black these days.) The guy making fun of "rappers" just sounds outdated.
Smug remarks about how all the women have breast implants (or other plastic surgery) these days. This was a popular trend in California for a while, but it seems to have died down. (In fact, these days, most of the people getting breast implants are either cancer survivors or transgender women. Probably not the sort of people you intended to make fun of.) But for some reason, the idea of "everyone has fake boobs these days" just stuck around because it showed up in movies and shows written by people living in California. (It's kind of like the "ribbit" frog sound effect or the dialtone-immediately-after-being-disconnected sound effect. It was region-specific to California for a while, and then through movies, because the standard in the public consciousness.)
