Caption contest #987 analysis

My caption

“Now I wish I didn't eat my camera.”

This was a tough one. I thought about it for several days before I settled on my caption. Every joke about the cat being the moon or a UFO seemed too obvious, or too difficult to make snappy. I debated going with a UFO-themed caption, since I figured most people would interpret it as a moon. I almost submitted “Unidentified Aerial Phe-paw-menon? I liked it better when we called them Unidentified Feline Objects.” But this was too awkward; nobody making this observation would spell out the meaning of the words since both speakers should already know them. They'd just say "UAP" and "UFO". Also I'd really like to avoid going with a pun, one would have to be really good to cross my threshold into "clever", and these don't measure up. My other thought along these lines was "Unexplained feline orb", but I didn't think this was that clever either.

I did see a few "unidentified feline object" jokes, so I'm glad I didn't go that route. In the end, I went with a classic comedy trope: "talking animals matter-of-factly discuss animalistic behavior". The crux of my joke, to me, is the word "now". It implies the dog thought eating the camera was a totally reasonable choice up to this moment; as if he thought "You know, I never use this thing, I might as well eat it," and was satisfied with this choice, only to have regrets upon seeing something supernatural, the one thing he might want a photo of.

What could I have done better?

Maybe it's hard to picture a dog literally eating an entire camera, but I was hoping to evoke the phrase "my dog ate my homework", i.e. not necessarily implying literal consumption, but general chewing-based mayhem. I think "eat" is funnier than any other word I could've used here, but maybe I could've come up with something more evocative.

Honestly, I think this is my best one so far; "thinking of a better idea" is the only strategy that could've helped. I didn't submit until Thursday; maybe I should've thought about it another day or three, but I assume late submissions have no chance of making it through because people have less time to vote on them.

The only caption I saw that made me laugh out loud was “I'm pissed! Are you pissed? I'm pissed!” Which yeah, is a generic caption that could go with most New Yorker cartoons,¹ but I hadn't seen it before, and it's a good fit. I'd like to be better at coming up with captions that are inherently sort of funny but get a multiplier from the context. I think that's the other path towards "funny" without needing the reader to solve a puzzle.

Verdict

Again, I think my idea is clever enough, and I didn't see anything else like it. 3/3.

Finalists

Finalist 1 🗳️

“I can’t believe the astronauts made it home without a scratch.”

This one is pretty clever. I saw a few that referenced astronauts, but this is the cleanest cat-based joke I saw. This one gets my vote.

Finalist 2

“Don’t worry. We’ll be seeing less and less of him.”

An obvious but apt idea: the dogs don't like cats, and since the moon is full, the cat will be on its way to being invisible after this moment. The dogs find comfort in this. I saw this joke a lot, and this is probably the most efficient expression of it, so if any of them were going to make it to the final round, I'm glad it was this one.

Finalist 3

“This is what five years of drug sniffing will do to you.”

"These people are seeing something surreal, they must be drunk/on drugs" is the laziest joke imaginable. Every New Yorker cartoon involves people seeing something surreal. It betrays a dismal lack of imagination when people try to engage with surreality in art and the most salient thing they can think is "I bet they're on drugs". I saw this "joke" dozens of times in the entries for #985 and found it just as contemptible. Here they at least attempt to justify it by tying it into a real thing, but "drug-sniffing dogs" don't consume drugs. They're able to smell drugs from far away, well out of contact range. That's the whole point. Also, if they were literally "sniffing drugs", that implies the drug in question is cocaine—which isn't associated with visions or hallucinations. Nothing about this joke works.

If it was cats looking up at a dog moon, you could make a catnip joke and at least be in the ballpark of a real idea (and some people tried to make catnip jokes anyway 😫) but there's nothing good about this and I can't believe it made it into the final round.

Contest #985 winner

“I tried making myself bigger and waving my arms, but it just thought I was conducting.”

This is the one I thought should win. Nice work everyone 🦝