There's a bit of nuance to humor; it's not black and white.

Good humor is much, much harder to produce than code. Pun threads in particular are lazy attempts at humor, which is worse.

It doesn't have to be humourless. You're free to make jokes. You're not free to make a comment that just consists of a joke.

I read HN for technical content so humor is fine as long as it doesn't distract from the content much. It's like a work meeting, humor is good but not of it distracts from what the actual point is

I doubt folks are too "wound up" over it. It's more an understanding that HN is as successful as it is because the community actively discourages low-effort content. It's unfortunate that some people think that quality discussion communities just happen, as if Internet message boards were the one place in the universe that defied the forces of entropy.

You can use the show dead feature... if you really want to know what got killed. And there's something to be said for the occasional inconvenience of flag killed comments for keeping a site from degenerating.

That is the only reason I am reading your comment. I have spent decades honing my bullshit filter. I would have folded a pun thread up. I might have accidentally read some posts and had a chuckle first. Now I am reading about something entirely different than an overpriced juicer.

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