I don't even think there's a prize other than bragging rights.Īn article in KQED Arts takes issue with the selections the magazine makes. Three finalists are selected, people vote, and then the winner is announced. They feature a cartoon and readers are invited to submit funny captions. Perfect.The New Yorker magazine has a weekly feature: the cartoon caption contest. You read the words aloud one last time: I guess Mike Pence is in town. Your masterpiece lies neatly in the caption box. Later that night, you sit at your computer, staring at the New Yorker site. Over the phone, your sponsor, Barry, tells you to stay strong and go to a meeting. You fling the magazine away and run off the train, even though it’s not your stop. A cartoon of the Statute of Liberty wearing a burka, begging for a caption. You exhale deeply before you turn the last page. A thin smile spreads across your face as you make your way to the you-know-what section. You leaf through a copy of the New Yorker that someone left on the subway. “It’s not your fault,” you repeat until the catharsis overwhelms you both. You see the suffering in his eyes and touch his shoulder, as Christ would have. “It was the best one,” you tell him, and you mean it. Admittedly-attractive co-worker expresses anger that his finalist caption didn’t win. You haven’t submitted a caption in weeks. You create a second New Yorker account for submitting multiple captions in clear violation of the Caption Contest’s rules, because you’re a monster. You Google “Bob Mankoff home address” and “UPS live animal delivery policy.” You learn that the Caption Contest has a new editor and your fantasy that the New Yorker was secretly grooming you for the role evaporates, along with your last shred of decency. He posts it on Facebook with the heading, “First try!” because he’s the prince of lies. Smug co-worker’s entry, It’s better than CrossFit, places as a finalist, and the bile tastes like copper in your throat. You scribble “caption multi-verse?” on a Post-it, before crossing it out. When two people look at a cartoon of the Three Little Pigs in a gastro-pub, does each see the same thing? Is I smell bacon objectively funnier than Who let the hogs out? Or is there no objective truth – a Schrodinger’s Caption scenario, where captions all are equally funny or unfunny until observed in pages of the New Yorker? Are there alternate realities where each caption submission wins? You’re doing this for her, you tell yourself. You think about what you’ll say one day at her funeral, and how the words will mean nothing unless they come from a New Yorker-published caption author.
Your mom likes your comment and replies, “Yours was better!” and you cry for a few minutes before calling her and telling her how much she means to you. You post the Caption Contest’s finalists on Facebook, and include your own submission (“Check please!”) as the first comment. You submit sham captions of repurposed memes and Airplane quotes just to “mess with them.” Consensus-Seeking Do they give out Pulitzers for captions? “I laughed,” admits now-less-attractive co-worker. That’s soooooo original, Preston Shaw from Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Should you make them less funny? No, you reassure yourself.
New yorker caption contest professional#
But are they too perfect? This is a contest for regular people, not professional comedy writers, which you very well could be based on these dynamite captions. The data confirms it: your entries are perfect. You spend your lunch breaks researching Caption Contest strategies online. And why not? Your captions are always better than the ones the New Yorker chooses. You send weekly screen-caps to attractive coworker with the subject line, “This one for sure!” Before long, you believe your own hype. You know you’re not going to win, but it’s not about that. You immediately send a screen-cap of your entry: Don’t say we met on Anglr, the mermaid tells the fisherman.
Instead of going to HR, attractive co-worker agrees. Drunk on approval, you boldly suggest a weekly “you show me yours, I show you mine” caption arrangement. An attractive co-worker calls you witty and asks if you ever enter the New Yorker’s Caption Contest.
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