I see this a lot, particularly on here: when someone doesn't find something funny that another finds funny, they're accused of not having a sense of humor.
I have a sense of humor. It might be different than yours, but I have one. I also have a low tolerance for noise on HN. I don't come here for "teh funny." I have others places I go for that. I come here for interesting, hacker related items. I can find funny all over the internet. This is the only reliable place I know of to find good hacker news. I'd rather not spoil that.
Scott, chill, it was tic. I'm sure that you have a sense of humor, but you didn't get my joke, apparently. You see, the thread is asking why HNers have no sense of humor, and... ah, screw it, it loses it if you have to explain it.
The erlang articles were mostly very interesting, and seeing a HN meme flare up and go away just as quickly, especially one that is self-deprecating in poking fun at the stereotype of the HN reader doing everything pg says, was very fun. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.
The only kind of noise that I really hate on HN is the "hacker news sucks" crap. If you think it's too noisy, get better filters, or help out by flagging the articles that violate the TOS, up-voting the articles that are good, and ignoring the rest.
Complaining about HN in an HN comment is frankly just humorless.
I kinda agree with you partly but, just playing devil's advocate here, one could make the exact opposite argument in that just because you'd like to keep it serious doesn't mean everyone else feels the same way.
Well, I come to hacker news to read news and to learn, not really for laughs. Sure a bit of comic relief here and there is okay, but god when the site gets covered in junk links (which rarely happens but I've seen a few bad days) -- it's beating the purpose of the site.
