Joke Archive

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 1, 2026

Artefactual Systems Uses SUPERPRESERVATION™ as Public Service to Permanently Archive the World's Tired, Overused, and Otherwise Exhausted Jokes

Surrey, BC - April 1, 2026

Artefactual Systems, creator of the SUPERPRESERVATION™ platform, today announced that it has deployed a dedicated instance of the system to house, contain, and SUPERPRESERVE™ the world's most overused jokes, puns, and comedic premises. The initiative, which has been inspired by the recent SUPERPRESERVATION™ procurement by the Organization for Acronym and Initialism Safety (OAIS) and the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Conceptual Collapse (IPCC), represents the company's largest public service undertaking to date.

"Nobody expected us to take on something like this," said Justin Simpson, Managing Director of Artefactual Systems. "Quite frankly, nobody expects this kind of intervention at all. Our chief concern was feasibility. Feasibility and community impact. Our two chief concerns were feasibility, community impact, and a ruthless commitment to long-term preservation. Amongst our concerns... I'll come in again."

The project, internally codenamed Operation Dead Parrot, was conceived after Artefactual staff observed that the global supply of comedic material had reached a condition the IPCC has classified as "pining for the fjords." Overused jokes, the IPCC warned in its most recent report, are now circulating in professional communications, conference keynotes, and even press releases at rates that pose a serious threat to public morale.

At this point in the interview, Simpson began to hum. Several Artefactual staff members immediately rushed into the room. "Stop that, stop that," said one. "He's not going into a reference while I'm here." Security-focused developer Steve Breker was positioned by the door. "I were told to stay 'ere and make sure 'e doesn't leave the room," Breker explained, "and to stop 'im referencing."

Jo Thiara-Austin had a further comment. "I told him the army would come for him if he didn't stop. In the end we just had Steve march up and down outside his office."

Scope of the Collection

The archive will accept submissions across all known joke categories. An initial survey conducted by the project team identified several priority areas:

"We looked at the complete landscape of exhausted humour," said Dr. Henry Wensleydale, the project's Chief Curatorial Officer. "We found that certain categories were particularly degraded. Puns, obviously. 'That's what she said.' The entirety of dad jokes as a genre. Knock-knock jokes have been in a critical state since approximately 1987. And there are entire regions, Dorset for instance, where comedy production has effectively stalled. We sent a correspondent to observe a local humour writer at work and the results were dispiriting. After three hours the man had produced only a single pun, crossed it out, signed his name, and gone to lunch."

The archive will also accept what the team has classified as "joke-adjacent material," including overused sarcasm, performative irony, and rhetorical questions that were never funny in the first place. Early submissions have already begun arriving. The dad joke category alone has filled an entire server, led by a submission from a man whose dog had no nose. When asked how it smelled, the answer was apparently so awful that the intake team refused to process it further.

A Question of Danger

The decision to use SUPERPRESERVATION™ was not taken lightly. Several team members raised concerns about the risks of concentrating so much comedic material in a single repository, a concern with historical precedent.

"There is documented evidence that jokes, when sufficiently concentrated, can be lethal," said Dr. Wensleydale. "During the Second World War, a British joke manufacturer produced a single joke so devastating that anyone who read it died laughing. It was eventually weaponised and deployed against enemy forces before being banned under a special session of the Geneva Convention. We have taken this precedent extremely seriously. All ingest workflows include a humour attenuation step, and no single staff member is permitted to read a complete joke during processing. Each joke is divided into segments, with individual workers handling no more than one word at a time."

When asked whether this precaution was strictly necessary for jokes that are, by definition, no longer funny, Dr. Wensleydale paused.

"That is an excellent point," he conceded. "But one can't be too careful. We did briefly consider whether overuse might have rendered them safe, but our risk assessment concluded that even a deeply unfunny joke could become dangerous again under the right conditions. Canned laughter, for instance. Or alcohol."

"I drink, therefore I am," confirmed Margo Pokorny, the company's Chief Beer Officer, raising a glass in the direction of the archive server room. Pokorny, who oversees the project's after-hours quality assurance programme, noted that she had named the four archive servers after philosophers: Kant, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Socrates. "Kant is a real pest and very rarely stable. Heidegger keeps thinking the others under the table. Wittgenstein is a beery little swine. And Socrates himself is permanently borked." She added that the company's only rule for the project team was that she didn't want to catch anybody not drinking.

Technical Architecture

The SUPERPRESERVATION™ instance stores all jokes in a state of quantum superposition, simultaneously funny and not funny until observed, which the team noted is the natural state of most workplace humour already.

"The architecture is robust," said Darren Craze, head of support. "We built the first version and it sank into the swamp. So we built a second one. That sank into the swamp. We built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up."

The system runs on Artefactual's established open source stack, supplemented by what the team described as "a very large server armed only with a banana." Craze insisted this was a perfectly legitimate architectural choice. "I'd like to see someone try to attack the archive with a pointed stick. Or a raspberry."

Community Response

The announcement has been met with enthusiasm from the OAIS, whose own SUPERPRESERVATION™ deployment was announced earlier today. The Nomenclature and Abbreviation Treaty Organization (NATO), of which OAIS is a founding member, issued a statement of support.

"NATO welcomes Artefactual's decision to remove these jokes from active circulation," said Secretary General Per-Anders Lindström. "At our weekly meeting this morning, when I asked the membership how ARE you (that is, the status of their Acronym Reduction Efforts) several delegates noted that overused jokes in professional communications were actively interfering with their ability to take acronym proliferation seriously. I farted in their general direction, which I regard as very fair, in view of what they've done."

Lindström added that the quality of jokes in circulation had declined sharply. "Jokes aren't what they used to be. When I were a lad, we'd have been glad to have a pun. A cold pun. Without a setup. And you try and tell the young archivists of today that, and they won't believe you."

"Loooxury," muttered the ICA delegate.

The Cakematica Question

Some observers have questioned whether the new archive is related to Artefactual's earlier Cakematica platform, which applied digital preservation principles to baked goods. Kelly Stewart, who led the original Cakematica initiative, denied any direct connection but acknowledged a "spiritual kinship."

"Cakematica was about preserving things that bring people joy," said Stewart. "This archive is about preserving things that used to bring people joy and now make them wince. It's the natural lifecycle. Today's fresh comedy is tomorrow's Cakematica. Everything eventually becomes mousse."

She paused. "Salmon mousse, specifically. You didn't use canned salmon, did you?"

Stewart noted that the Cakematica platform itself had been retired after the team attempted to add just one wafer-thin feature update. "The whole thing exploded," she said. "It was everywhere. On the walls, on the ceiling. We had to get a bucket."

Addressing Concerns

Not all reactions have been positive. The People's Front of Comedy has written an open letter arguing that retiring overused material would leave them with nothing to perform. (A separate letter was received from the Comedy People's Front, who wished to make clear they have no affiliation with the People's Front of Comedy. "Splitters," they added.)

"Apart from the puns, the callback humour, the observational comedy, the physical gags, the satire, the wordplay, the self-deprecation, and the absurdist premises," asked one comedian, "what has original joke-writing ever done for us?"

"Brought peace?" offered another.

"Oh, peace. Shut up."

When asked what the People's Front of Comedy planned to do in response, a spokesperson said, "Right. This calls for immediate discussion."

The project team has also encountered resistance from jokes themselves. Several submissions have refused to be archived, insisting that they are still in active service.

"We had one knock-knock joke that had been circulating since 1953," reported intake coordinator Sarah Romkey. "It insisted there was still plenty of call for it. We checked with the community. There was, in fact, not much call for it around here. Or anywhere, really."

One submission proved particularly difficult: a pun so ancient that it predated written language. "Migration was a doddle," said Romkey. "It's the provenance metadata that's killing us. We're not even sure it's ours to archive. It keeps saying it belongs to someone else. 'It's not my joke,' it says. 'I'm just holding it for a friend.'"

Another submission, a one-liner from the 1970s, had lost its setup, its punchline, and most of its cultural context, yet still refused to be decommissioned. "It's just a flesh wound," it insisted.

What's Next

"And now," said Simpson, seated behind a desk that had been placed inexplicably in the car park, straightening his tie, "for something completely different."

About Artefactual Systems

Artefactual Systems is a commercial open source software company serving archivists, digital preservation professionals, and the broader open source community. Its products include Archivematica, AtoM (Access to Memory), Enduro, Cakematica (retired), and SUPERPRESERVATION™. The company is headquartered in Surrey, BC, and has never, to its knowledge, killed anyone with a joke. For more information, visit artefactual.com.

About the IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Conceptual Collapse (IPCC) is an independent scientific body established to assess the risks of metaphor exhaustion, analogy fatigue, and rhetorical entropy in professional communications. Its most recent report, "AR7: We've Run Out of Ways to Say Things," was described by reviewers as "imagine if we built a giant badger and filled it with footnotes."

Media Contact

Artefactual Systems

Office of Communications and Comedic Containment

press@artefactual.com

Artefactual Systems would like to clarify that no lupins were harmed in the production of this press release. We know what you're thinking. What the flower has that got to do with anything? Frankly, we're not sure either, but we practice making these disclaimers nearly every day. Well, not absolutely every day, but most days in the week. I expect we must practice four or five times a week, at least. I reckon we could disclaim that tree over there.