I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day about niche comedy. It spoke of a drummer telling jokes about drumming to other drummers, and reminded me of a friend at university who studied maths once telling me about mathematical jokes, which made no sense to non-mathy people.

The joke was something about mathematicians not being able to tell the difference between Christmas and Hallowe’en, because Dec 25 is Oct 31. I did not laugh, because regardless of my deep abiding love for statistics, I am not a complete nerd. To be fair, he didn’t laugh either, but this was because as well as a mathematician, he was a normal human being with a functioning sense of humour.

Anyway, I think the joke had something to do with computers. This did not mean it had something to do with social media, but as we all know by now, I…