This is exactly what I've been complaining about lately. Hacker News seems to have been mobbed with people who have zero sense of humor and no ability to recognize satire. Hackers like to laugh. They like to laugh at themselves most of all.
I've noticed this trend for the past couple of months...comments and articles that are clearly intended humorously being voted down as trolls, or responded to as trolls, or both. I know we're supposed to be politely nudging these new users onto the path of righteousness and into becoming productive members of the HN community...but how does one teach someone to have a sense humor? I really don't want to be one of those Eternal September types, but hackers like to laugh.
Hacker News seems to have been mobbed with people who have zero sense of humor and no ability to recognize satire.
In my tenure as a hacker I've found that the subset of hackers who don't get satire and seem to have no sense of humor is at least as large as the subset that does. For every cool, funny hacker guy you meet, there's at least one weird, humorless semi-autistic guy waiting to make the next teambuilding outing more awkward.
Hey, I just told Jenny she would look way hotter if we were playing Lazer Tag in tight Star Trek uniforms instead of our street clothes. That's a compliment, right? I thought I was supposed to make our new team member feel welcome.
Did you notice that everyone who commented but didn't get it has been here for at least 200 days?
Also, I wouldn't call this satire, since I get the feeling it's an accurate description of how the author felt when he was first introduced to Lisp. And since it's missing the "Eureka!" moment that I assume is coming in part two, I can't fault people for not spotting that.
Regarding attempts at humor, I think most of that becomes noise. Most people aren't funny, but are convinced otherwise. Half of most Slashdot threads are posters trying to be funny. I think attempts at humor don't scale well.
Everytime I catch myself thinking "there's a newbie who doesn't know HN etiquette," I check to see how long they've been registered. More than half the time, to my surprise, they've been here for at least six months, and sometimes longer than I have.
This is how it works when groups grow. In a group of 5 close friends it's not hard to know when someone is joking. You all know each other's style. As the group grows the safest thing is to just not joke around lest you risk someone misinterpret your joke.
I've noticed this trend for the past couple of months...comments and articles that are clearly intended humorously being voted down as trolls, or responded to as trolls, or both.
Well, see, here's the problem. 99% of articles written like this are not satire. So you get conditioned to jump down people's throats when you read something like this.
(I am not sure why the "Someone is WRONG on the Internet" effect is so strong, however. If someone really does think like this, we should just ignore them and hope they go away.)
I agree. But...um...it's obviously intended to be funny. So, the problem is that folks are arguing, vehemently, against an article that is intended as satire. It's like arguing with an article in the Onion. The Onion isn't always funny, but it's pointless to argue with it.
Come on now, everyone knows that the One True Way(tm) to generate a humorous tech title, satire or otherwise, is with code similar to the following perl code:
We like to laugh, and we would have laughed if the joke was original.
Laughing to the same joke over and over is retarded. We have seen this same (or variation of this same) joke many times before. Its getting old, tired and uninspiring.
I've noticed this trend for the past couple of months...comments and articles that are clearly intended humorously being voted down as trolls, or responded to as trolls, or both. I know we're supposed to be politely nudging these new users onto the path of righteousness and into becoming productive members of the HN community...but how does one teach someone to have a sense humor? I really don't want to be one of those Eternal September types, but hackers like to laugh.