There is an art to doing proper mathematics. There is an art to performing proper comedy.
Doing mathematics incorrectly is deplorable.
Doing comedy incorrectly is cringe.
Unless you are willing to experiment with being deplorable and cringe, maybe just stick to one or the other and call it a day.
Here is an example of a good mathematics joke.
If someone didn’t know much about proofs, they might be taken in, but it would be relatively harmless. Knowing the history of QED isn’t too important to be a good mathematician.
It would be funny for a graduate student to try to convince their class that □ is the way it is because if LaTeX malfunctions.
Here is an example of an excellent mathematics joke.
This one has a “dad joke” quality to it. Short and sweet; the cringe is not so overbearing compared to the simplicity.
If someone doesn’t know the basics of predicate logic, they can still grasp the nature of the joke, and maybe roll their eyes a bit.
If someone is familiar with predicate logic, they can quickly context switch and get a good chuckle out of it.
The audience for the previous joke is narrowed to those who have written proofs before, so the humor is more obscure. The audience for this one is wider, so the humor is more accessible.
Here is an example of an adequate mathematics joke. Making something into a meme is an automatic invitation to humor, thus setting the correct tone.
Equating the notion of ‘indeterminate forms’ with the notion of ‘deadly sin’ is worth a small gig. In my experience, people do tend to commit a lot of sins when it comes to infinity, so the meme also grants a humorous resolution to a frequent real-life frustration.
(Have you ever graded students’ papers when they do things like “∞ – x = ∞ - ∞ = 0”?)
Here is an example of a mathematics ‘joke’ that is so egregiously bad, I want to ban this person’s account. In trying to build off of the humorous meme, he’s just made a ridiculous mess of things.
This guy is trying to use an old trope of comedy: “Make fun of someone who ‘complicates’ things when the reality is much simpler.” But, this type of bait-and-switch has to be based on truth for it to be effective.
Raising something to the power ∞, or subtracting or multiplying by ∞ doesn’t make any sense if ∞ is a ‘regular old number’. Many treat infinity as a number rather than a representation and mess up their operations because of it.
To be skillfully subversive, you have to demonstrate that you intimately understand what aspect of reality you are subverting, and then make an overt commitment to overturn this reality anyway.
There were many opportunities to build off the original joke. For example, #1, #2, and #3 are all essentially the same indeterminate form – divide by zero and multiply by infinity are roughly equivalent. There’s a joke here about how many sins disguise themselves as other ones.
Instead, this guy completely dropped the ball.
If you don’t understand the underlying reality but still try to subvert it, you’re just being stupid. And doing mathematics poorly. Doubly deplorable.
Here is an example of an insanely good mathematics joke.
And, if you can believe it, an even better joke!
If the idea of breaking cubes into smaller cubes wasn’t enough, you could break these smaller cubes into different dimensions 😂.
The levels of meta are off-the-charts! Each answer fully understands, incorporates, and then breaks the logic of the previous layer.
Both of these examples use classic meme formats in an ingenious new context. The risk of being deplorable and cringe pays off and is transmuted into brilliance and mirth.
Let this be a warning to future math meme magic makers: know your stuff before you go making a mess of both mathematics and comedy.