Tag Archives: bezos

Joke About Jeff Bezos

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The joke:

Jeff Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon, is investing in a startup that’s trying to extend human life. He says the work is very important to him: The more years you live, the more annual membership fees you’ll pay for Amazon Prime.

How I wrote it:

This news item seemed like a good candidate for my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. That’s because both topic handles, “Amazon” and “extend human life,” seemed to have enough associations to link.

“Extend human life” has the association “live more years.” So I brainstormed associations of the other topic handle, “Amazon,” that have to do with yearly events.

That’s how I thought of paying a membership fee to Amazon Prime every year. And that association fit with most people’s belief that Amazon is very eager to make money. So I decided to base my punch line on a connection between living longer and paying more fees to Amazon.

My Joke Maximizer #1 is “Shorten as much as possible.” And the joke might have worked with a shorter angle like “That makes sense.” But instead I went with “He says the work is very important to him.”  That angle heightens the surprise, and the funniness, of the punch line: the audience is led to expect that Bezos has altruistic motives, but it turns out his motives are mercenary.

The joke also might have worked if I had left “the former CEO of Amazon” out of the topic. But I decided to mention Amazon in the topic because otherwise I wasn’t sure that the whole audience would immediately connect Bezos with Amazon when they heard the punch line.

Joke About Jeff Bezos’s Space Flight

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The joke:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrived safely back on earth in his space capsule this morning. And an email from Amazon said the other three passengers will arrive later in a separate shipment at no additional charge.

How I wrote it:

I chose this news item to base a joke on because it was a big story. It also seemed to offer enough associations for me to use in my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

A typical version of the news item began like this: “Riding his own rocket, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos streaked into space Tuesday on a thrilling 10-minute up-and-down flight.” That version has a lot of possible topic handles, but I had to choose only two of them to use in creating a punch line.

“Amazon” seemed like a promising choice for a handle because it has a lot of potentially useful associations. To help decide on a second handle, I thought of what associations of Amazon I had already used to create other jokes; I didn’t want to repeat myself.

I realized I hadn’t yet written a joke referring to how Amazon sometimes makes partial shipments. Delivering items in a shipment seemed similar to delivering passengers in a space capsule, so I decided my punch line would blend those two concepts.

I relied on my memory of past Amazon emails to come up with the detailed wording “will arrive later in a separate shipment at no additional charge.” I needed that detailed wording to make it completely clear that the punch line refers to an Amazon partial shipment.

Finally, I edited the topic to focus on only those elements of the news story that I needed for my punch line: “Amazon,” plus the concept of a container arriving that contains only one item.

Joke About the Air and Space Museum

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The joke:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is donating $200 million to the Smithsonian for its Air and Space Museum. He says he can relate to the Air and Space Museum because those huge boxes that Amazon uses to mail tiny items are mostly full of air and space.

How I wrote it:

I thought I could turn this news item into a joke using my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. That’s because the news item offered two topic handles, “Amazon” and “Air and Space Museum,” each of which seemed to have enough associations that I could link.

The handle “Air and Space Museum” has the association “air and space.” As I brainstormed possible connections between “air and space” and “Amazon,” the mental image of a box shipped by Amazon came to mind. I visualized opening the box and seeing one small item surrounded by lots of those air-filled packing pillows. And I had the idea for my punch line.

But before I went ahead with that punch line, I did some research online and reassured myself that I’m not the only person who thinks that Amazon often ships boxes mostly filled with air.

My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear,” and I used it in two ways. The first way involved my punch line, which starts at “those huge boxes.” It’s fairly long. So I repeated in my angle the topic handle “Amazon” and the name of the museum. That way my audience would have those important words in their head when they heard the punch line that relies on their remembering them.

Another way I made the joke clearer was to write an angle that gives Bezos a logical reason for his donation: he relates to the museum. An angle that doesn’t spell out a specific reason, like the angle “He says he made the donation because,” wouldn’t have connected the topic as smoothly to the punch line about the air-filled boxes.