NOTICING IN THE 1990s that the behaviour of ‘playing on the computer’ (often perceived by office managers as ‘misusing’ the computer) primarily involved sharing jokes, folklorist Paul Smith dubbed the computer ‘The Joke Machine’ and predicted the exponential growth of its humour-generating function. This label implied that the machine was more than a storehouse of information. If the Internet merely provided a cabinet to file one's favourite joke, it would not brandish the expressive, interactive features or cultural functions of folklore that frequently lodge as commentary on popular culture. More than being a reproductive medium, however, the computer, as it became more of a home appliance, fostered the creation of new material that, in Smith's words, could only exist ‘within the machine’ (Smith 1991: 274; see also Foote 2007; Fox 1983; Jennings 1990: 120–41). Users at home and work manipulated images and adapted texts, often commenting on the technology and inviting social feedback that distinguished the humour as ‘computer lore’ (Bronner 2009; Preston 1996).

Why joke in and around the machine? Smith implied that it is a natural process for humans to appropriate new technology for folkloric transmission, and he drew an evolutionary pattern from user-controlled media of the typewriter to the photocopier, fax machine, and computer. Yet the high volume of traffic on the Internet and the creative, interactive forms therein suggest something more at work (and play) on the computer. In its personalized consumer version, the computer promised more self-reliance in a growing culture of modernistic individualism, but at the same time risked alienation and corporate, mass cultural control over individual users and appeared to threaten social interaction in traditional communities. As a result, I contend that joking became associated with digital transmission for several reasons: first, it serves emotionally and psychologically to respond to anxieties concerning diminished human control and competency for users; second, it signals for them an intimate social connection that questions a dominant corporate order; third, it creates symbols that provide or project a satisfying transgressive or aggressive effect; and fourth, its brief and often visual form adapts well to the physical screen frame.