I'm not saying they aren't funny, but they are not jokes.

You might have a different definition of joke to me. Is a joke not something that is said or done to cause amusement or laughter in the audience?

the silliness leading to a catastrophic collapse of a pre-conceived understanding into a different but plausible model.

That sounds like a _type_ of joke, but it's quite reductionist to claim that "all jokes must be like this".