Dad Jokes has a humongous presence on the net: more than 1.7 _million_ people follow the account on Instagram. While another 776.5k fans follow the Facebook page and 144.3k people support the Twitter page.

And they told me that funny dad jokes have no future, that they wouldn’t provide any career prospects! Bah! With the number of cheesy puns I crack every day, I could’ve been a millionaire by now! But no worries—I’ll just continue to [ahem] brighten up my friends’ day by telling the worst jokes I know at lunch. With renewed enthusiasm. Lucky them!

For better or for worse, dad jokes aren’t going anywhere. Robert McPherson writes on The Bison that they will always be around as long as dads still have their unique sense of humor: their goofiness will persist, no matter what.

Meanwhile, The Telegraph explains that these kinds of simplistic, corny, and punny jokes are, in fact, not as silly as you might think.

According to Professor Sam Shuster from Norwich University Hospital, testosterone makes male humor more aggressive in its tone. “Fatherhood, however, has adverse effects on testosterone levels. Expectant and new fathers can see their levels of the hormone drop—almost on a par with their bank balance—once there’s another mouth to feed,” Rob Kemp writes in The Telegraph.

Dad jokes are harmless, linguistically developed, and encourage children to play around with words. Which is great for everyone involved. What’s more, they’re a coping mechanism for dads who have to watch as their tiny munchkins grow up into moody teenagers. In other words, dad jokes help dads remember the good old days when they could make their kids giggle with a silly pun.

That’s why I think we need accounts like Dad Jokes. To remind us of a simpler time when it didn’t take something complex and deep to bring a smile to our faces.