The Imaginary Part

I have a hypothesis regarding the comparison of the ability of punning folk.

Amongst those who pun actively, everybody is able to produce bad puns to a similar level of ability. It becomes instinctive enough to search for puns that you can come up with poor (often self-referential) puns virtually on demand.

This means that if you are to compare two people by how bad their puns are, the only observable criterion is the point of equilibrium each person chooses between high frequency of jokes and having any friends. The people who seem to not say the bad puns are just restraining themselves more effectively.

Truly good puns do require some level of skill in my opinion. Unfortunately I don't think of them very often.