> It got more upvotes because of the errant Show HN than it would have otherwise.

I'll trust you on that and reiterate my apologies. I have never thought that Show HNs get more votes by default (look at the Show HNs in my history, you'll see they got absolutely nowhere), and was not trying to game the system.

> More significantly though, this doesn't feel very on topic for HN

I thought that this was mostly determined by whether or not the HN community upvotes a link. I personally do think there's a role for (perhaps infrequent) satire about certain quite cringe-inducing types of articles you get here. I saw a similar piece the other day - can't recall the link though.