A cold joke is a sort of nonsensical joke that is funny because it’s not funny, sort of like the New Yorker Anti-Cartoon Caption Contest. Two examples:
1. A piece of bread was walking down the street. It got hungry, so it ate itself.
2. Hanging in the hallway at Whites High School in Wabash, Indiana, are basketball team photos. In the center of the front row in each picture someone holds a basketball identifying the year: “62-63″, “63-64″, “64-65″, etc. One day I saw a freshman looking at the photos. Turning to me, he said,”Isn’t it strange how the teams always lost by one point?”
aren’t some of these meta jokes? e.g., you’re pointing out the silliness of a piece of bread walking down the street, feeling hungry, and then you return to the real world where a piece of bread is food.
my favorite meta joke is too long for a comment, here’s the short version:
two eggs in a frying pan, one egg says to the other “gee, it’s so hot i’m beginning to coagulate,” the other says “gee, a talking egg.”
This video is an excellent example of what you are talking about:
https://www.collegehumor.com/video:1772014