The paper discusses problems of modern operation of social jokes as short prose genres that swiftly reacts to nowadays events. It has been estimated that compact form of information delivery peculiar to funny story has become the most productive amongst other samples of the form.The spotlight is given to necessity of social approach usage while analysing the newest folk texts. On apar with musically-poetic compositions about coronavirus and its impact on social life a range of prosaic compositions has recently emerged. Considerable place amongst these compositions belongs to a phenomenon of a funny story. It is a layer of family and social compositions which in spite of serious danger of coronavirus infection, psychological and physical discomfort felt by a person while pandemic is a manifestation of optimistic worldview and evidence of normal development of a nation.We have separated out the commonest genre-thematic types of prose new compositions, that appeared during world pandemic (funny dialogs about quarantine, funny stories in a format of mass media news, ironic thoughts with diagnostics of modern problems, funny advises, funny announcements); we have also sorted out common functions of jokes in modern social problems. Compositions are regarded as a result of processing modern problems with folklore awareness; examples that not only present actuals of modern life from a national joking culture position but contain ironic analysis of queries with historical content; ideological, economic, moral and ethic condition of society and evidence about deep understanding of urgent problems of social life by the people.Active functioning of a funny story in modern conditions is an evidence of optimistic worldview of ukrainian people and ability of nation to healthy self-irony.It has been estimated that authors new compositions quite swiftly obtain folkloric traits and are an enriching source for traditional folklore.