I disagree. The community decides what the community will be, and there's nothing wrong with asking for someone to keep the level of discourse to something above that of jokes a 12 year old would make.
I'd rather the community decide not to be the kind of place where novelty (mildly sexist) usernames are common. The conversation suffers when cheesy jokes are the norm. There are places and times for those kinds of things; many subreddits are totes down for "pm_me_X" novelty accounts. Take it there.
I'm not saying jokes are wrong, but there's a reason the cheap joke and image meme is discouraged here. They tend to rise above the deeper comments, because they're quick and easy to digest, and so get a lot of upvotes because of it. But, as a community, we're deciding to favor the deeper comments...even at the expense of missing a few jokes and image memes in these conversations. If that kind of selection doesn't suit you, there are many places that don't impose those guidelines.
> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.[0]
