Janks Archive conducts an investigation of insult humor—an ancient oral tradition—from cultures around the world. While intentions appear, at first, to be cruel, “janks” are in fact an integral aspect of human interaction, used as much to strengthen camaraderie as to establish dominance. The project documents this tradition through crowdsourcing and field recording, in which participants recite “janks” from memory and the collective gathers contextual information in an attempt to trace origins.