Conservatives Have One Joke

About

Conservatives Have One Joke, also known as The One Joke, is an internet axiom that posits conservative social media users will repeat jokes with essentially the same premise – mocking the idea that there are more than two genders – ad nauseam. Since emerging in the late 2010s, the axiom has spawned communities and videos pointing out how often conservatives attempt to make the joke.

Origin

On May 12th, 2019, which was Mother's Day that year, Ben Shapiro tweeted,^[1] "Happy Legal Guardian of Unspecified Gender Day!," a joke he had made multiple times on Mother's and Father's Days over the previous decade.^[2] In response, user @9_Volt_^[3] remarked, "you guys have like one joke you tell over and over again." User @ArnavChopra11 then rebutted, "We have as many jokes as you do retarded genders," to which @9_Volt_ said, "This is the same joke again."

Precursor

In the years preceding the exchange between @9_volt_ and Ben Shapiro, multiple memes mocking the idea of gender identity spread in conservative circles. These included image macros with the punchline "There Are Only Two Genders," the memetic phrase "I Identify As an Attack Helicopter" and the catchphrase "Did you just assume my gender?," etc.

Spread

After the exchange between 9_volt_ and Shapiro, the term "one joke" became a prominent means to dismiss conservative jokes regarding gender identity. For example, on August 21st, 2019, two users in the /r/terriblefacebookmemes^[4] subreddit used the phrase "One Joke" in response to a comic with the phrase "Did you just assume my gender?," gaining over 160 and 50 points, respectively, in roughly four years. This led to a question about the phrase "one joke" in /r/OutOfTheLoop^[5] that same day.

A subreddit dedicated to the axiom, /r/onejoke, was subsequently formed and has since gone private after gaining 67,000 subscribers as of late 2023.^[6] While the subreddit cannot be accessed as of November 28th, 2023, without joining, references to it when someone comes across the "one joke" are prevalent on Reddit.

For example, on September 4th, 2021, a Redditor in /r/forwardsfromgrandma^[6] posted an image of a man wearing a shirt that said they "identify as vaccinated," titling the post /r/onejoke. The post gained over 3,300 points in two years (shown below).

On December 22nd, 2022, the subreddit /r/TheRightCantMeme^[7] picked apart a StoneToss comic trying to rebut the "one joke" idea by showing multiple common conservative jokes (shown below). The subreddit's biggest criticism was that the first two "jokes" in the comic are the same joke.

On February 23rd, 2023, The Daily Show tweeted a video montage of conservatives mocking pronouns and multiple genders, gaining over 180 retweets and 1,400 likes in nine months (shown below).

Daily Wire's Lady Ballers

On November 27th, 2023, The Daily Wire released a trailer for an original movie called Lady Ballers in which a group of men say they identify as women in order to dominate women's sports (shown below).

The trailer was widely mocked shortly after, with many commenters noting the website had made an entire movie dedicated to conservatives' "one joke" (example by Twitter user @JesseHawken^[8] shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References