Urban Dictionary: “The most versatile diss/comeback ever created in the history of your mom. Usually it has no effect or sense (especially when used in response to your mom or when you’re talking to someone’s mom), but it’s hilarious when you use it right.”
“Your mom” jokes have been around for as long as there have been moms. The first one ever recorded dates back to 1500 B.C.E. Babylonia. Other famous recordings of these jokes are found in Shakespere’s “Titus Andronicus” and in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Often used as comebacks, “your mom” jokes are intended to insult one’s mother by talking about her age, weight, competency, and copulation habits, the punch line of the joke being delivered in the form “yo mama”.
But this definition of your mom jokes fails to account for its current use at CHS . “What u say in response to any question” (courtesy once again of Urban Dictionary) is a definition that is closer to the way I hear the joke currently used. Your mom jokes have made a resurgence in pop culture among Gen-Z as sexual inuendos directed toward one’s mother, seemingly corresponding with the rise in popularity of the term “milf” and replacing the ever popular, “that’s what she said” joke. Nowadays, you have to be careful asking a friend what they are doing over the weekend because you may end up with a new daddy.
I asked my mother about her take on the “your mom” jokes, as she has been subjected to and made the subject of them quite often due to the humor of her 12 year old daughter.
“I find them juvenile and lacking in imagination,” my mother said, “I think mostly I am over it.”
I was about to end the hard hitting interview when my sister blurted out a semi “your mom” joke for the reader’s entertainment.
“Your mom is over it, quote your mom,” she said.
And she has the right to be over it. In a Wolfpacket Instagram post, people were asked whether or not they like “your mom” jokes. The responses were split almost evenly, with 31 respondents liking “your mom” jokes and 36 respondents disliking them. This dislike can be attributed to an over exposure to “your mom” jokes causing a rewiring in one’s brain to only think in “your mom” jokes. I myself am split on the matter. On one hand these jokes are crude, immature, and down right annoying. On the other hand I make way too many of them, even if just in my head, to be making any judgements on the case. Just the other night I was playing cards against humanity and card came up “Donald Trump has nominated blank for VP”. I was very disappointed not to be holding a white “your mom” card at that moment.
My brain doesn’t seem to be the only one to be rewired. On a group text thread with my friends one evening we asked ourselves if water was wet. These were some of the answers given: “Your mom sure was last night” “If your mom was water she would be wet for me”. Despite being lude, rude, and generally inappropriate, “your mom” jokes may never go out of style, just like your mom.