In some lame-ass flyover state like Arkansas or Nebraska. Not Our People, in other words. Why, they've probably never even heard of haiku. Which is not to suggest that all joke haiku are about making fun of the yokels. Far from it.
People write joke haiku about art, music, current events, and many other different subjects.
But at the heart of all of them is the fact that the author wrote seventeen syllables of unrhymed doggerel and borrows the cachet of a traditional Japanese art form to pass it off as inspired quirkiness. Milk after five months in my refrigerator tastes just horrible. The point being made here is that sour milk tastes bad. The insidious danger of the joke haiku, therefore, is that the distinction between the insightful and the banal becomes blurred by the unearned credibility that accrues to it. So far we've explored the ways in which joke haiku are an affront to, respectively, cleverness, classical Japanese poets, the haiku form itself, and genuine observational humor.