Social Media Star Dave Ogleton Reveals His No. 1 Tip for Telling a Good Dad Joke (Exclusive)
Social Media Star Dave Ogleton Reveals His No. 1 Tip for Telling a Good Dad Joke (Exclusive)
Tabitha ParentThu, June 18, 2026 at 6:00 PM UTC
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Dave Ogleton with his book 'So Dad It's Good.'Credit: Courtesy of Dave Ogleton -
Dave Ogleton began creating dad joke content in 2019 after pivoting from dance videos during the pandemic
His viral success began to grow when he began consistently sharing dad jokes, often inspired by his own parenting experiences
As he releases his book, So Dad It's Good, he talks to PEOPLE about his number one tip for telling a good dad joke
As the internet's "King of Dad Jokes," Dave Ogleton (known as @FitDadCeo online) has one piece of advice that he shares with everyone looking to start building their arsenal of corny, but always lovable, wisecracks.The influencer and dad of six first began creating content in 2019, when social media was awash with dance videos a la Charli D'Amelio. "I quickly found out that my 37-year-old self wasn't very good at that," he tells PEOPLE, laughing.
Dave Ogleton with his wife Jackie and their six kids.Credit: Courtesy of Dave Ogleton
"So I pivoted to what I knew and that was more of the parent humor and what everybody else was going through at the time," he says, referring to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.He started to see followers consistently showing up in his comments after he posted his first dad joke video online. "I stopped doing them after I did that one, and I saw my content was kind of plateauing a little bit," he says. "And I was like, well, 'Why didn't I go back to that other one? It was my first viral video I ever had.'""All of a sudden, I was just doing two to three of those every day and I really started flying on with my growth on social media," he explains.
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Offline, Ogleton has always been one to take an opportunity to "crack jokes" or "use stupid puns," so his content came naturally. "I just am generally trying to make [my kids] laugh as much as I possibly could. So doing something like this was right up my alley."Ogleton, 42, also knows a good dad joke when he sees one. And there's one main element that he deems most important to telling a good one."For me, if I laugh at the joke myself, I know it's going to be good. I would say almost 99% of the time, if I have to re-record it three or four times because I keep laughing at my own punchline, it's typically going to be pretty good," he shares. Some of his jokes aren't even his own originals, and yet, repackaged with a new punchline or a new way of delivery, they become instantly funnier.
Dave Ogleton, Michael B. Jordan, Jackie Megraw and their daughter.Credit: Courtesy of Dave Ogleton
Of course, dad jokes are often aimed at kids, so Ogleton says that, "From someone else's standpoint, when my kids hear me saying it, if they're like, 'Dude,' as kids like to say, 'you're chopped,' that's usually a good indicator that it's a good joke also."Ogleton's youngest is in preschool, and his oldest is about to go off to college, and as a result, his parenting experience runs the gamut."With the growth of my content, a lot of people are just like, 'It's good to see that your kids are exactly the same as our kids or our teenagers,'" Ogleton explains of how he's seen his content touch other people's lives. "We all have this community where we're like, all of our kids are exactly the same, but I've tried to make a way of making it humorous, so those tough times aren't as difficult."Continuing, he shares, "The dad jokes, they kind of speak for themselves. It's just like that's there to make you laugh or roll your eyes. And early on, I think the best responses that I would get from people were just saying basically, you've helped us get through this pandemic, you've helped us get through so many difficult times."Now, he's put his witticisms into a book called So Dad It's Good, capturing all of his top-tier cracks in one neat package."I think it was within the first 20 videos I did, of dad jokes, and someone commented, it was like, 'I hope you put these into a book at some point,'" he recalls.Ogleton says that the book is set up in a way that feels like a paper replica of his social media platform."A lot of people have gotten to know me as almost like a millennial parent," he says, sharing how the jokes in the book will be shaped by what his social media presence online is like. However, he's not just telling jokes for parents. "I wanted it to be just separate categories. I have a lot of different people that follow me, but I have a good amount of teachers that follow me," he explains."So I made a special chapter just for teacher jokes. And when I had that in my mind, I was thinking what other categories are very broad but can still make people laugh with very niche jokes that are inside of it. And so it's made up of nature jokes, celebrity jokes, music jokes, teacher jokes and on and on.""We're not going to be done parenting ever," Ogleton says, referring to him and his wife, Jackie, who is part of the brains behind his viral content. "And so it's almost like giving our wisdom to other people in the form of comedy."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
