The life and death of the iPad joke

Share

Give adults a chance to lapse into the immaturity of their pimply, brace-faced junior high days and you can bet they'll take it.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs threw out a bone this week when he unveiled his company's latest gadget: the iPad. Within seconds, social networks and blogs appeared to be ruled by a mob of 13-year-olds, rapidly posting gags about menstruation.

But with social media tracking, it was easy to see how quickly a joke can die in the Web 2.0 world.

The #iTampon hashtag – tacked on to many of the groan-worthy iPad jokes circulated on Twitter -- was one of the top trending items following Wednesday's announcement, at one point even surpassing #iPad.

There were the good: I'm already going through like 4 or 5 iPads a day because of my heavy workflow.

The bad: I'm not sure how I feel yet about the iTampon ... I mean the iPaps. I mean the iPad.

And the done-to-death: But does it have wings?

At 3:00 p.m. EST, just two hours after the product was released, the joke peaked, and the backlash began.

Im done with the #ipad #itampon stuff. Colour me whelmed, tweeted one user, a sentiment shared by others with every passing hour.

Joke fatigue was also noted on YouTube, where a four-year-old clip from Fox's sketch comedy show Madtv was given new legs this week. In the prophetic video, an office drone waxes poetic about Apple's new sanitary product – the iPad – to her menstruating co-worker. Comments on the video went from the initial hilarious!!! on Wednesday to wtf? and later, mad tv still exists?!?! yesterday.

With the online world asking how Apple's marketing team could have made such a gaffe in naming the gadget, Mr. Jobs didn't seem fazed.

Kara Swisher, who writes for All Things Digital blog and was present for the product launch, quoted him saying, "You forget, but they made fun of iPod name when it came out … what matters is the product and what it means to consumers."