"In the repeating row of “Kern This!” stickers, is the first “Kern This!” sticker more or less ’funny/educational’ than the eighth, “Kern This!” sticker? If one were not supposed use them, then one would need but one of each, Sherlock."
Sorry, Mr Berlow, but I disagree with you again on this one — I think the repetition of certain instructions is definitely part of the joke : "Kern This!" is precisely the kind of comment a tight-sphinctered typographer would make AGAIN AND AGAIN (we are all a bit obsessed by that, aren't we ?).
I tend to think you're strenghtening my point, here.

"“Kern This!” is precisely the kind of comment a tight-sphinctered typographer would make AGAIN AND AGAIN"

Perhaps a tight-sphinctered typographer who's already inserted his head up the anatomy in question would repeatedly shout, "Kern this!", and think it was funny, over , and over, again... But, the tight-sphinctered typographer with his head bent on typographic improvement says, "Kern this 2 units tighter", or "Kern this 2 units looser", sticker, or not. See the difference? Really, I'm not trying to strenghten your point for the time when it'll be an easier insertion for you. If you don't believe me, go ahead and repeatedly shout, just the "Kern this!" sticker, at a bunch of student projects. My guess is, they won't even laugh a little, the first time. :-o

Cheers!

I would comment on this but then that would be an ode on a Grecian kern :-)

ChrisL

David, I think that Stéphane's point is that finding objectionable kerning will happen more often as you look over designs than the others so it's natural that there should be more of them and that you would locate them on a page together. Not as you have it that you would either use ( or shout ) kern this repeatedly one after another.... Still, as you have no doubt deduced I could not condone use except among consenting adults.

I'm afraid my command of written English fails me here : in my opinion, these so-called stickers are obviously not meant to be used at all, even for fun. The joke (of Monty Pythonesque proportion, I would dare to say) here is the SUPPOSITION that they simply COULD exist — and that there would be morons to use them. Not a sane mind would even THINK about using them — so they are a way to poke fun at typographic ayatollahs, which implies a healthy dose of caricature (hence the multiple "Kern this!" provided on this FICTITIOUS "toolbox").
I'm a teacher myself and I wouldn't use this stuff on my students' work — but, as already told, I shared the joke with them and they did find the whole thing ludicrous AND funny.

The surest way to kill a joke is to analyse it, I suppose.

Still, I work in production, not design, and I get to look at author manuscripts and then (fingers crossed) improved typeset copy all day (and just occasionally I'm able to nudge dodgy usage in a better direction, as in "please do not break ‘analysis' after the ‘l'" or "please do not add hyphens to this URL at a line break"), and I got a chuckle from this & forwarded it to my colleagues. Of course we wouldn't dream of actually using it, but the fun is in imagining using it: and therefore the supposition is that there's such a lot of poor or non-existent kerning about that you'd need a lot of stickers for that. (Hey, it got my boss to look up ‘kern'!)

Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.

So you had a build-up of spam blocking your pipes? Not fun. :-( Our moderators should be able to fix that problem.

Good laugh. Thanks.

Funny type jokes.

ChrisL