Xeroxlore

Xeroxlore and photocopylore are two terms folklorists apply to a corpus of humorous traditional materials that circulate in physical form and are reproduced through mechanical means, such as photocopiers, scanners, mimeographs, typing, and printing. Much of this corpus has been shown to circulate in the United States, Great Britain, South America, and European nations. Like jokes, legends, and other folklore speech genres, xeroxlore texts have no known creator, are updated to remain current, and evolve into variants. Within the field of folklore, xeroxlore has been assumed to be an offshoot of the joke tradition. This entry discusses the content of xeroxlore, the major analytical approaches to it, its transmission and use in social life, and the role of graphics.

In form, xeroxlore is very heterogeneous and probably cannot be defined as a genre or subgenre based on structure. Some of the documented stories and jokes are not specific to xeroxlore but also circulate orally. In addition to narratives, there are parodies of official forms, lists of one-liners, and drawings. Graphics are often roughly drawn, crass, and obscene in their content. Sexual and scatological acts are portrayed explicitly, and no personage—political, religious, sports, management, or worker—escapes a scathing portrayal.

The introduction and improvement of printers, computers, faxes, and other technological means of replication enabled the mass dissemination of xeroxlore texts. Partly because these innovations were expensive when introduced and were located in businesses, workplaces became one of the primary sites of xeroxlore transmission. Drawings accompany or comprise a large percentage of xeroxlore texts, and disseminating graphics requires an easy means of mechanical reproduction. Since reproductive technologies, including the Internet, have become common in homes and small offices, the transmission of xeroxlore has become much more widespread. The content of xeroxlore may be affected by technology in a profound manner: narratives and jokes that are shared in xeroxlore are often longer than in oral tradition. Brevity has been a hallmark of American humor but this appears less true in xeroxlore.

Analysis of xeroxlore has been hampered by the reluctance of academic presses to publish the coarser materials. Consequently, the more “literary” examples (parodies of memos, letters, regulations, etc.) are probably overrepresented in publications while drawings are probably still underrepresented.

Alan Dundes described xeroxlore as work related, urban, and concerned with contemporary ills. Since xeroxlore contains sarcasm, irony, and even vitriol in jokes about incompetent bosses and malfunctioning bureaucracy, folklorists have tended to read it as subversive of corporate cultures. These two ideas—that xeroxlore expresses protest or subversion and that xeroxlore is particularly associated with the modern corporate work environment— have informed the scholarly discourse since then.

Arguments purporting that xeroxlore is subversive rest on several observations. The first is that the content of the texts often violates social rules and decorum, emphasizing the body and bodily functions and reasserting earthiness and the carnivalesque. The second sign of subversion, according to folklorists, is that xeroxlore involves the personal use of regulated (company) property. Xeroxlore also represents misspent time (from the corporate viewpoint). It is the production of noninstrumental goods for individual and small group—not corporate—use.

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