Marketing Professional Proposes Social Network Of Parents' Worst Nightmares  

Let's talk about social media networks. As a wise man once said, it's a small world, after all, and every time someone comes out with a way to "stay connected" or "hook up" or "prove our undying allegiance to Mark Zuckerberg," that world gets ever smaller.

Sometimes developers come out with a great idea. I'm an avid user of Twitter and Facebook, which puts my social media age at about 103, by technological standards. These very successful networks have helped me find jobs, build an audience and joyously reconnect with relatives who owe me money.

On the other hand, I have not really had much use for the newer Ello, which seems to me to be the online equivalent of standing in a bare-walled room with no furniture, by yourself, with nothing but a Dixie cup and a string to shout into. Props to Ello for trying to be the "anti-Facebook," but I could not figure out how to find my friends there or how to get around the site. You can take away my ability to navigate around your network, but it will be a cold day in hell before I hang out on a social network that lacks kitty emoji.

My point is, not everyone can hit it out of the park every time. For every winner like Tinder, there's a social network that has sunk into obscurity for one reason or another. The Internet is a fickle mistress—which is perhaps why one idea by Steve Byrnes didn't catch on.

Byrnes is the head of a company that does corporate branding, wherein company logos are seared into the posteriors of corporate lackeys so that they are easily identifiable during the long and arduous cattle drive across the Plains. I'm sorry, my mistake; I've been out of the corporate world for a while, and apparently things have changed. Byrnes helps companies make their products more readily identifiable to consumers. The main idea here is that he's a marketing professional. Who should know better. Keep that in mind as you read on.

Anyway, Byrnes came up with what he believes is a Big Idea, and he posted it on a business website for marketing professionals, just to get the lay of the professional land, so to speak. Basically, his idea was to launch a new social networking site based around—wait for it—the knock knock joke. He believed that a social networking site based on knock knock jokes would break down the walls of prejudice and foster meaningful dialogue between people from different cultures. He was also clearly deranged. Adults who happen to be parents spend obscene amounts of time trying to figure out how to get away from knock knock jokes.

Anyone who has spent a lot of time with a small person below the age of, oh, five years old or so, knows that their sense of humor is just beginning to emerge. This emergence is cute and adorable, but can be alarming to someone who is not used to it. At this point in their joke-telling development, the small child is capable only of repeating nonsensical, potty-related gibberish, like:

Child : "Want to hear a joke?"

Unsuspecting Adult: "Uh . . . sure."

Child: " Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Adult : "I don't know. Why?"

Child : "Because it was making a POOP on the BUNNY!" (Hysterical laughter from all 5 year olds in the area)

This is all well and good, but at a certain point, the small person becomes aware of knock, knock jokes, a lethal form of humor that is not only easy for them to memorize, so it can be told over and over and over and over until you just want to jam a lobster fork in your ear, but has also been used in times of warfare to completely disarm the opposition by boring them to death. One particularly deadly knock, knock joke that kids love goes something like this:

Child: "Knock, knock."

Adult : "Who's there?"

Child : "Banana."

Adult: "Banana who?"

Child: "Knock, knock."

Adult : "Who's there?"

Child : "Banana."

Adult: "Banana who?"

Child: "Knock, knock."

Adult : "Who's there?"

Child : "Banana."

Adult: "Banana who? Is there an end to this joke?"

Child: "Yes. Knock, knock."

Adult (wearily): "Oh my God. WHO'S THERE???"

Child: "Orange."

Adult: "Orange who?"

Child: "Orange you glad the chicken didn't POOP on the BUNNY???" (Hysterical laughter from all 5 year olds in the area)

Just kidding. I think we all know the real punch line to that classic. I would have written it out here, but apparently it's still classified and being used as a torture device overseas.

As you can imagine, this idea was not met with the normal amount of appreciation that your typical Big Idea usually receives. The other business executives on the site, who have obviously been through this stage of development with their own children, politely suggested that he increase the dosage of whatever medication he was taking.

That's not to say that there's not a germ of a good idea in there somewhere. Byrne just had his target audience wrong. Why not just give the 5-year-olds the knock knock joke social network, so they can "Banana" to their heart's content? While they're giggling, Mom can log on to the sister network, "A Glass of Wine and a Good Book That I Will Never Finish Unless I Lock Myself In The Bathroom."

I call that a win-win.