STFU Parents: The Art Of The ‘Momedy’

There’s a certain brand of mom humor – much like there are certain brands of mom jeans – and it’s a little hard to describe. Mom comedy, or “momedy,” ranges from genuinely funny to stab-you-in-the-eye cringe-worthy humor, but the one thing every type of momedy Facebook update has in common is that the joke ultimately only appeals to parents. A non-parent such as myself might get a kick out of a bit of momedy from time to time, but for the most part, the reaction is part laugh, part groan from people without children.

That’s not to say that I don’t think parents are extremely funny. Many parents have been celebrated by winning Gold Stars on the blog, and I appreciate good humor no matter who’s making the jokes. But momedy is a separate category altogether. It’s the delusional idea that your kids are hysterically funny, or that you as a mom are enviably hip for “saying what other moms don’t.” Sometimes the joke really is funny, but it just isn’t appropriate for Facebook. Like I said, it’s not easy to put my finger on exactly what momedy is, but like a Supreme Court Justice attempting to define obscenity, I know momedy when I see it.

1. Kids Say The Darndest Things

 

It’s one thing to relay something your child said if it’s actually funny. Children are, by nature, funny creatures because they’re still getting their bearings on language, humor, and the world at large. They have little reason not to say exactly what comes to mind, and oftentimes that results in something funny. But it’s not always funny, and the best moments for parents to post about on Facebook are typically one-liners. If the joke comes out in the form of a paragraph, and the construction of that paragraph includes typing phonetically typing in baby talk, I can almost guarantee that it will not read as HILARIOUS to anyone but grandparents and people like K., who, let’s face it, might not be the most discerning of audiences. Choose wisely which “snippets” to post, because your kids will come up with about 20,000 more as soon as they learn to talk.

2. Blackmail Pics

 

This child and her “winter potty outfit” are genuinely funny and adorable, but it’s still not a picture that should be posted online. I know that as oversharing becomes more of the norm on sites like Facebook it’d be easy to write this off as innocent humor, but it’s still laughing at a kid’s expense while she sits on her potty. Pass the picture around at a play group or something; don’t broadcast it online. Preserving your daughter’s dignity is more important than laughing at her goofy potty uniform with dozens of Facebook friends.

3. You Had To Be There Humor

 

When you sacrifice looking bad just so you can tell a not-very-funny joke your kid made, you’ve officially gone off the deep end. I don’t know about you guys, but nothing sounds worse to me than admitting my bed farts smell bad while talking about myself in the third person on the Internet. “…and mom has a little gas”? Andrea’s sense of decorum seems to have been expelled from her butt, along with her gas.

4. Inappropriate Inside Jokes

Trudy and Tim are married with kids. They are “joking” about being in love with their children, which probably sounds kind of normal when it’s just the two of them, but on Facebook, it’s grounds for dismissal AKA utilizing the “Hide” feature. We’ve already seen moms who have unusually close relationships with their sons, but it adds another layer of WTF when the “joke” is that a husband and wife are “cheating” on each other with their kids. Let’s keep the qualities of romantic love separate from the love we have for our children, please, at least when expressing that love on Facebook.

5. Toilet Humor

 

Someone has too much time on her hands, and I’ll give you one guess as to who. While I understand why Alexa thinks this is funny – just as I would expect most parents to find this diaper scribbling amusing – to me, a currently childless adult, it reeks of immaturity to post this on Facebook. Perhaps I’m just a bitter shrew, but I prefer to see pictures of children being silly, not necessarily their parents. Maybe momedy has its place in the real world, but on Facebook the laughs are few and far between. And often involve smelly poop.

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