So why are they called Wisdoms? It's not actually interesting. I just had a family-friend (as in, friends with the entire family) pull up their car next to me and the mom just opened her window and said, "My kids think you're very wise". I don't know what prompted them to say that, but I do know those words have been living rent free in my head with a whole penthouse suite and kids since they were spoken. While I would strongly disagree with the claim that I'm wise, I feel like attempting to live up to the hype wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. After hundreds of these, I can say with confidence that that was a stupid thing to think.
As a bit of a precursor, in the winter of 2022, when I was 17 and just got my first phone, I'd text anyone I could whenever I could, especially friends. In an effort to get some conversation going, on March 22nd, 2023, I decided to come up with some stupid one-liner jokes to send daily to my friend who shall remain nameless (his name is █████). I did this for about a few days in a row until I got bored and stopped. Some of these live on the Wisdoms themselves (#4, #8, #23, #26, #27, #79, #240, and #245. #245 was the first one I sent him).
Fast forward to November 6th, 2023. It's 50 days before Christmas, and another friend named ███████ decided to count down to Christmas with a GIF every single day. I felt this was boring (quote "For every day he counts down, I'm going to post one of my wisdoms. This will ensure he stops". He did not.) We agreed that he'd supply the Christmas GIFs, I'd supply the jokes. Many Wisdoms were improvised the morning of, some of them had been in my back pocket for a while, and many others were just random jokes I had picked up from my years of internet usage. The week before Christmas, my GIF posting friend proposed I print out the Wisdoms when all 50 were finished and distribute them among our friend group for voting. Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday night, and knowing I wouldn't see my friends until the 31st and wanting to do this ASAP, I brought a printed copy of the first 50 Wisdoms and gave them to the friend group. Unfortunately, as soon as the paper was handed over, I had to leave, and thus didn't get to see anyone's reactions like I was looking forward to. Plans foiled! And so, I decided to come up with some new ones (labeled A-Z, which are now 51-76), so that when I tried again the next week, there'd be new Wisdoms for them to (hopefully) laugh at and I could see genuine reactions.
Now, it's December 31st, 2023. Armed with New™️ Wisdoms (and some prototyping via 4 friends who were within comedy distance), I was in a lunch line and another friend (there's a lot, try to keep up) named ██████ mentioned I was "quotable" (after I said something stupid, I'm sure). I had never felt more prepared for any situation ever. I don't remember what I said, but I'm sure it was to the effect of "Boy do I have some paper for you". She kept the copy, brought it back to her table, and like a disease, it spread. By the end of the next week, I had about 30 people who gave me their top 3 favorites. I had left the 76 Wisdoms for a while, but part of that "vote" was statistics for how many of the Wisdoms were plagiarized. To my surprise, 45% of them were unoriginal in some way, and so during the week of January 8th, I sought out to fix this. During many nights of staying up until 2AM thinking of new ones, I created 100 more wisdoms and presented them that next Sunday.
Now, it's March 7th, 2024. I had come up with a few miscellaneous Wisdoms (maybe 10 or so) in the prior 2 months, but it had mostly stalled out. Then, in another group chat (different one than last time with more people), another friend (I told you) named ██████ made a fatal flaw by saying "I'm surprised we've gone 24 hours without sending any messages". This was then followed up by another friend who said "[my] phone must be broken". Foul deed! I sought out to send at least one message a day via the Wisdoms, and I did. I don't know when, but sometime during that, I made it my mission to get to 365 Wisdoms, one for every day of the year (then I could truly call them the Daily Wisdoms). This mission was completed on September 9th, 2024. I always told myself that I wouldn't overdo it, that I'd just keep posting one a day, and I'd stop once I ran out of them, so to be able to say I made it to 365 (well, from 178 to 365 at least) without stopping is surreal.
That's a long and uninteresting story all to say this: I consider myself very blessed to have so many friends who not only tolerate my shenanigans, but also ones who seemingly enjoy my poor attempts at comedy and have greatly encouraged me in one of the lamest journeys ever known to man. I stand by the fact that one of the greatest gifts you can have is the ability to bring joy to other people, and I'm privileged to have seen countless smiles and heard countless forceful nose exhales, whether I meant to cause them or not.
Do I wish more of these jokes were original and not stolen? Of course. Do I regret sharing what I've found online with my friends, and thus bringing them laughter anyway? Not one bit. Unfortunately, I did not do a good job of keeping track of sources, nor can I be sure that the places online where I read them were the original source of them either. For the sake of transparency, I have attempted to find the sources for many of the Wisdoms that I copied verbatim, paraphrased, or just heavily inspired me. These can be found by inspecting the source of this page. "Referred" means I was told it by a friend, "Unknown" means I found it online somewhere, but wasn't able to track down a source, and "Original" is self-explanatory.