Matt Jordan (2:41)

Which is not a bad caption. That's a pretty good one.

Willie Staley (2:44)

Yeah, we approve of that one.

Emma Allen (2:46)

And then will you read the bottom one, which was one of your.

Willie Staley (2:49)

Sure. The bottom one is, girl, I'm gonna fuck tonight.

Emma Allen (2:53)

So, slight difference in tone.

Matt Jordan (2:55)

That's not how I read it, actually.

Emma Allen (2:57)

How would you read it?

Matt Jordan (2:58)

I read it more like, girl, I'm gonna fuck tonight. Slight different emphasis.

Emma Allen (3:02)

Yeah, yeah, See, I read it like, girl.

Willie Staley (3:06)

Yeah, that's a little bit more.

Emma Allen (3:10)

So tell me a little bit before we get into more examples and parsing the subtle differences between those and the winners. And tell me a little bit about how you found each other and started doing this.

Willie Staley (3:22)

Well, Matt lived in D.C. years ago and ended up being roommates with one of my best friends from college.

Matt Jordan (3:29)

I remember there was a dinner party where I told many long discursive narrative anti jokes. And I think I won you over that night.

Willie Staley (3:39)

Yeah. That was New Year's Eve.

Matt Jordan (3:41)

Yeah. And I think you then felt as if you could open up to me, that you had this passion, which was submitting these captions.

Willie Staley (3:49)

I was underemployed bartending, and I started posting these a little bit. And then he and I would joke around on G Chat a lot. And then we started doing it more regularly. Is that.

Matt Jordan (4:00)

Yeah, we g chatted about it.

Willie Staley (4:01)

And it took a while, I think, to fall into the rhythm of it, but then it sort of became a nice thing. Like, every Monday morning, I flip open the computer, go to contest.newyorker.com, and then I email Matt or Matt emails me, and we just get the ball rolling like that.

Emma Allen (4:16)

Sort of a classic tale of underemployed man finds soulmate at New Year's party, takes to the Internet to become an obsessive commenter.

Willie Staley (4:27)

Yeah.

Matt Jordan (4:28)

It's almost embarrassing.

Willie Staley (4:29)

Yeah. If it weren't so clichy.

Matt Jordan (4:33)

Yeah. I think what we're trying to do is, in all honesty, like, I'm just trying to make myself laugh. Like, we have this, like, goofy project that we've, like, for some reason committed ourselves to. Like, I don't really think about it as, like, trying to, like, undermine the contest or, like, actually even really try to respond to the contest. Like, I'm just trying to die laughing.

Emma Allen (4:50)

I brought you in here to explain why you're doing this.

Matt Jordan (4:52)

Yeah. It's that simple. I'm sorry, Emma. It's that simple. But, you know, but there's a couple. We have, like, a bunch of different sort of strategies that we employ and, like, one of the. I think the fastball is just, like, going back to this character that we've sort of developed and a total outsider to the sort of, like, ivory tower, like, intellectual and social elite that the sort of New Yorker sort of, you know, refracts and represents. He's just beating his head against this thing, and, like, can never figure out how to get it right. And, like, can't figure out not to swear. Like, can't figure out can't figure out not to make masturbation jokes. Cannot figure out, like, to keep it under, like, 150 characters. Like, some of our best ones are just, like, extremely long.

Emma Allen (5:37)

Yeah. It's always interesting to hear what drives people to submit as obsessively as they do and care as much as they do about the caption contest. Because, like, part of my, you know, 10 months in this job has been learning that everyone I encounter in the world, like, the first thing that they'll say to me is they'll sort of, like, you know, start wagging their finger in my face and be like, I haven't won the New Yorker caption contest I've submitted for 20 years. My captions have always been better than every single one that's ever made the cut.

Willie Staley (6:04)

These people are often liars. I read Bob Mankoff's book. There was, like, a journal story about people years ago about people who were angry about never getting their captions picked. And they interviewed, like, notable people who claim to submit every week, and I think Zach Galifianakis is one of them. So Mankoff points this out in the book, and he was like, I looked.

Emma Allen (6:24)

Being my predecessor in the role. Yeah.

Willie Staley (6:26)

And he looked into the archives, and he was like, zach Galifianakis only submitted twice or something like that.

Matt Jordan (6:33)

Mankoff's a data nut. I mean, I feel like he really loved the data.

Willie Staley (6:37)

Yeah. Are you as in love with data?

Emma Allen (6:39)

No. I'm an English and studio art double major who literally couldn't tell you just minutes ago that 10:17 was October of 2017. So, no, not really a number scale. No, I submitted in high school. I. I actually. I was, like, trying to figure out if I could find my submissions. I submitted every week for, like, four years in high school and never won. Which I think the real lesson is that you can never win and still become the cartoon editor of the New Yorker. So people should feel. Really should feel heartened.

Willie Staley (7:12)

Do you have any, like, one caption that you felt should have at least been a finalist, if not the.

Emma Allen (7:17)

As much as it Kept me up at night for many years. I don't still remember my high school submissions. I finally moved on.

Willie Staley (7:25)

I remember my, like, first submission, actually, which was. It was a sincere. It was an earnest effort. The cartoon was, like, boss of some sort. And there was, like, a large. A gigantic coffee mug on his desk with gigantic writing instruments in it. And I was like, I've got this. And submitted, like, as I'm sure you're well aware, we handle some very big clients. Didn't get in.

Emma Allen (7:52)

And that's when he turns the dark side.

Willie Staley (7:56)

And I was like, fuck this.

Emma Allen (7:58)

It only took one. Yeah, no, it is. It's interesting. There are actually a lot of. I've always loved this one statistic, which is that there are vastly more men who submit than women, which I think is sort of a fundamentally, like, male thing to be like, wow, like, a bunch of professionals do this thing. I could do their job better. And then when they don't, like, take it incredibly personally.

Matt Jordan (8:22)

Yeah.

Emma Allen (8:24)

Should we look at a couple more examples?

Matt Jordan (8:26)

Yeah, sure.

Willie Staley (8:27)

Yeah, sure, sure. That sounds great.

Emma Allen (8:29)

We have this Amy Huang, the cactus one, which is pretty recent.

Matt Jordan (8:33)

I'll try to describe this.

Willie Staley (8:34)

Okay.

Matt Jordan (8:34)

Yeah. So we have a sort of a desert scene. There's a sort of a mesa or a low mountain kind of off in the distance. We have a man and a woman jogging, it looks like, for exercise, given that they're wearing sort of matching athleisure wear. The man seems pretty content. He's jogging forward, but the woman's looking behind them and is saying something to a giant humanoid cactus that's following them now. One interesting.

Willie Staley (9:02)

Saguaro cactus.

Matt Jordan (9:03)

Yes, Saguaro cactus. Yeah. And one interesting detail about this cartoon is that only the cactus is leaving footprints.

Emma Allen (9:11)

Yeah, no, it's a cartoon about Jesus. You know, the footprints beside you on the sand.

Willie Staley (9:15)

Yeah, that was when the cactus carried me.

Emma Allen (9:19)

Well, the winning caption was. I thought you said it wouldn't need much attention.

Willie Staley (9:24)

That's pretty good.

Emma Allen (9:25)

Yeah.

Willie Staley (9:25)

You know how young people are with succulents, too.

Emma Allen (9:28)

Oh, yeah. They love to talk about how they killed succulents.

Willie Staley (9:30)

Yeah.

Emma Allen (9:31)

It's a whole new genre of millennial humor.

Willie Staley (9:33)

I like that one.

Matt Jordan (9:33)

Yeah, it's not so bad.

Emma Allen (9:36)

But as an alternative, you guys submitted.

Willie Staley (9:40)

Oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit. Fuck.

Matt Jordan (9:46)

I mean, I think you probably. What you're trying to convey, I think, is the sort of emotional state of the woman who's being pursued by a giant, very charming cactus, by giant saguaro.

Willie Staley (9:56)

Cact covered in spikes, which would be terrifying.

Matt Jordan (9:59)

Yeah, absolutely.

Willie Staley (10:00)

You're out there alone, you know, and there's a giant saguaro cactus chasing you.

Emma Allen (10:05)

One of the more terrifying varietals, for sure.

Willie Staley (10:07)

Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's much friendlier succulents, but.

Matt Jordan (10:10)

Saguaro cactus, I think they hold a lot of water. I think there's a lot of water locked up in a saguaro.

Willie Staley (10:15)

I think you're right about that.

Emma Allen (10:17)

So what you guys have done here, basically, with the caption contest, what we. What I, in selecting the cartoons that we use for it, try to do, and, like, I tend to find ones that, like, have one weird thing in the hope that, like, everybody essentially tries to resolve the. Tries to resist. Yeah. And in, like, in relatively similar ways, so that there aren't, like, competing reads of who's talking or, you know, like, whether it's the giant cat in the window or the, like, talking vacuum cleaner that you're supposed to be making fun of. Yeah. So it's basically, like, one thing that you want to elegantly resolve, and you guys, what you do, it's not the most elegant solution. It's the least elegant solution.

Willie Staley (11:00)

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Emma Allen (11:03)

I'm curious. How do you think the system actually works? How do you think the winners are actually selected? Sometimes when I talk to people, I feel like the vision that they have in their mind is of me sort of in a darkened in front of a fire, like, tossing their submissions into the flames and like, Mr. Burns cackling until I find one that's, like, particularly, like, punny and dorky, and then I'm like, the winner.

Willie Staley (11:27)

Well, my understanding is that a young man named Colin Stokes has to read all of them wrong.

Emma Allen (11:32)

No, it used to be that the cartoon assistant would sort through all of them. And we, like, lost many good young men to the cause because they would sort through these 6,000 captions, many of which were the same or almost identical, and then winnow it down to be voted for the final few to be voted on. But, yeah, now it's. The whole thing is done by sort of algorithm up until the very last steps. So people vote unfunny. Somewhat funny. Very funny online. And then this algorithm was developed at the University of Wisconsin for an experiment on genetic diseases to determine a ranking of which genes were most important in expressing a disorder. And this was like a test. We were using it as, like, a test case to help them hone the algorithm. So that calls the sort of downvoted ones or least upvoted ones. And then Colin looks at A list of, like, the top hundred picks, like ten or so from those, and then the winner is selected by popular vote. It's, like, pretty much more democratic than the US election process at this point.

Matt Jordan (12:37)

But also totally hackable.

Willie Staley (12:39)

Is that algorithm open source?

Emma Allen (12:41)

Yeah, I think it might be, actually. Oh, God, this is a disaster. Russia is gonna be like on this.

Willie Staley (12:49)

I assume the algorithm stopped. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Emma Allen (12:53)

Yeah, heavy arm of the algorithm fell down harder.

Matt Jordan (12:57)

If you had put spaces between the ellipse and the words, maybe the punctuation was safe.

Willie Staley (13:02)

Yeah. One of the ellipses has five periods. That's frowned upon.

Emma Allen (13:07)

It is interesting because I feel like a lot of times people, when they submit to the caption contest or submit humor, any of the humor I look at, whether it's shouts or cartoons, there's this impulse to imitate sort of what you're describing, to imitate what one thinks like a New Yorker sensibility is. And they're always the worst submissions. I mean, like, it's the notion that, like, the New Yorker is this very, like, dry, stuffy, like, punny thing. And the caption contest, sometimes those things are rewarded because it is people voting on each other's ideas. But, yeah, it's the sort of difference between you guys. There's the LeCroy.

Willie Staley (13:46)

That's a good one.

Emma Allen (13:46)

Which is like, one of the things that you do is use sort of like very contemporary meme, ish Tumblr trending things and words and like, brand names and things. Do I have that? Oh, I have it. I have it. Okay. It's psive. Do you want to describe?

Willie Staley (14:03)

Yeah. So this is a guy in the hospital. He is wearing what looks like one of those frat boy beer helmet things with two cans of something strapped to his head, but they're feeding into his arms like an iv. The winning caption. This one's good. I was just transferred to the fraternity ward. No, Matt's shaking his head a little bit. It's close to him.

Emma Allen (14:27)

That's verging in.

Matt Jordan (14:29)

That's definitely pun territory.

Willie Staley (14:30)

Yeah, Yeah.

Emma Allen (14:31)

I would say the percentage of puns. I mean, I am very adverse to puns. So the number that actually make it into the magazine is quite low at this point. But, yeah, it works.

Matt Jordan (14:42)

It definitely works. But you can do more with this particular image.

Emma Allen (14:48)

Such as, for example.

Willie Staley (14:49)

For example, it's pomplamoose Lacroix. Lol. I'm, like, addicted. Which is okay. So to explain this to the listener.

Matt Jordan (15:00)

So I think, though, what. And this is. I Think the magic of PCVE's cartoons. Like, there's the look on this guy's face as he's saying this. Like, he's excited. Like, he's. Like he's having a pretty good day.

Willie Staley (15:11)

You know, there's this whole performative love of La Croix. In particular the grapefruit flavor that exists online and which is, like, very millennial inflected and, like, pointless to a certain extent. It's like, it's a brand of seltzer from the upper Midwest that has kind of ugly cans.

Matt Jordan (15:31)

It's cheap at Target, and it's terrible for your teeth.

Willie Staley (15:34)

I didn't know that.

Matt Jordan (15:35)

I used to drink a lot of it.

Willie Staley (15:36)

I used to. Yeah. No, I actually.

Emma Allen (15:38)

I feel like they leave me less hydrated than when I started.

Willie Staley (15:41)

That's the question about seltzer, Right?

Matt Jordan (15:44)

Yeah.

Emma Allen (15:44)

Anyway, I'm a vintage girl.

Willie Staley (15:48)

The idea is just he's a dumb online millennial.

Matt Jordan (15:51)

Yeah.

Emma Allen (15:52)

These are very, very Tumblr schemes.

Willie Staley (15:54)

They're Tumblr friendly. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Jordan (15:56)

I love Tumblr. I think it's fantastic.

Willie Staley (15:59)

It's a nice community.

Matt Jordan (15:59)

Yeah, it's this, like, weird, like, happy space in between, like, the darker, more consequential parts of the Internet.

Willie Staley (16:06)

And we've definitely, like, honed a certain, like, insanely dumb Internet speak style. Just, like, by virtue of just living in that realm, I think you just slowly get dumber. Do you sense that there's. In our wild popularity on Tumblr, there's a. There's a yearning in your. In your audience for dumb millennial humor that is, like, intentionally unfunn.

Emma Allen (16:30)

Are you trying to sell me something right now? Because if you don't mind, I brought along this folder of.

Matt Jordan (16:35)

Do you guys hire captioners?

Emma Allen (16:38)

So I can't draw here, let's do one more, and then we'll call it a day.

Matt Jordan (16:44)

Yeah, can we do the bird one?

Emma Allen (16:46)

Yeah, let's definitely do the bird one.

Willie Staley (16:47)

Matt, do you want to do it?

Matt Jordan (16:49)

So what we have here is there's a park bench scenario, nice looking park, a couple of trees in the background. There's a. A man sitting and reading a book. And what's happening next to him is there is a person absolutely swarmed by birds. I'm just covered head to foot in birds. And the winning caption is. Shall I keep reading that?

Willie Staley (17:15)

I'm just gonna be straight. I'm just gonna be honest here. This is the first one. I feel like that's a dud.

Matt Jordan (17:19)

Yeah.

Willie Staley (17:20)

I don't know. Did that person have, like, a big Twitter following or something. Game of the.

Matt Jordan (17:25)

That's too dry. That's too. Yeah. Somebody hacked this particular context. Willy, do you want to read the one on the bottom?

Willie Staley (17:35)

Sure. You've got like 35 birds crawling all over you, my dude.

Emma Allen (17:41)

So you've literally described.

Willie Staley (17:43)

Yeah, that's a classic.

Emma Allen (17:46)

That's the classic approach for you.

Willie Staley (17:49)

And that one. You know, I will say this. Tumblr loved that caption. Probably just the inclusion of my dude to make it sound. Tumblr loves.

Emma Allen (17:58)

When you describe exactly what's happening in an image and then end with my dude. They're like, oh, yeah, that's totally the same.

Matt Jordan (18:06)

Yeah, we gotta get that dopamine rush of those likes and those reblogs.

Willie Staley (18:09)

Yeah. So I'm now noticing how many times we've described literally but slangily, what's happening in the.

Emma Allen (18:15)

Yep.

Matt Jordan (18:16)

Yeah.

Willie Staley (18:16)

Yeah.

Emma Allen (18:17)

Well, yeah, it's that either that route you go fucked up or lewd.

Willie Staley (18:22)

Which do you like most?

Emma Allen (18:23)

Cursing.

Matt Jordan (18:24)

Yeah. Which one is gonna win? Which one's gonna win? Emma?

Emma Allen (18:27)

It's always very funny to read theories of what makes the winner because of course, it's like none of them are really right because it's people voting on the Internet and an algorithm created by scientists. But there was this great University of Colorado Boulder study that was like, there are four factors you have to take into consideration if you want to win, which are novelty, length, punctuation and abstractness and imaginability, which, like, actually with your guys. Captions, you do pretty well on all because it's like, you do have uncommon words like researchers. Yeah, researchers were like, well. Or like man lit.

Matt Jordan (19:09)

That's a good one.

Emma Allen (19:10)

Researchers are like, okay, so check that off. Often few punctuation marks. Often you guys just have all lowercase and no punctuation marks, which I think would be a winning.

Matt Jordan (19:20)

That was a major, like, year three innovation. Yeah, we really turned that off.

Emma Allen (19:24)

I'm glad to know that you're constantly rethinking your project process and improving on it.

Matt Jordan (19:28)

I mean, there's clear. I mean, people love the contest. People really love it. They really want to be. They really want to win. They really want to be a part of it that, you know, like, it's a great. Like, it's a great product that the magazine puts out.

Emma Allen (19:39)

Yeah, I will say that. So I don't submit anymore for, you know, relatively obvious.

Matt Jordan (19:46)

I think someone would burn this building.

Willie Staley (19:48)

Down if you want.

Emma Allen (19:49)

Oh, yeah. But no, my boyfriend did. As I mentioned before, a lot of the submissions that come in are actually Truly the same. Like, exactly the same thought. And before I was in this job when I was just editing Shoud's stuff, he won. But then Colin realized it was him. And for potential accusations of nepotism reasons, Colin gave it to someone else who had the same. But we still have a print of it in our bathroom.

Matt Jordan (20:21)

Oof.

Willie Staley (20:22)

Oh, man. What was the. What was. Can you tell us what it was?

Emma Allen (20:24)

Sure. I'm kind of curious. So it's a Michael Maslin cartoon, and it's two cars. A car's rear ended, another car, and the two drivers have gotten out. There's a stoplight hanging in front of them.

Willie Staley (20:35)

I remember this one.

Emma Allen (20:35)

Remember this one?

Willie Staley (20:36)

Yeah. And I know what I submitted.

Emma Allen (20:37)

Either. And sort of the devil, I think is in back. He's rear ended the angel. And the caption my boyfriend submitted was, didn't you see the light? Which is the caption that also won.

Willie Staley (20:51)

Oh, wow. Mine was great. Now we'll never make it to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's shoulders in time. Just awful. Didn't even make sense. But, you know, ISIS was big at the time.

Matt Jordan (21:05)

I'm not gonna say what Ryan.

David Remnick (21:12)

That was Willie Staley and Matt Jordan of shitty New Yorker cartoon captions.tumblr.com they talked to the New Yorker's Emma Allen. That's it for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks so much for listening, and be sure to catch up on Twitter. New Yorkerradio. Catch you next.