The bizarre misreading otherwise is a mixture of magical and rigid thinking, or possibly poor English comprehension. However, there’s nothing substantive about speculating upon what goes on in someone’s head.
Sometimes “no” is the correct and complete answer.
The comment was obviously unsubstantive regardless of how "wry and pithy" it felt to you. You've been posting other ones in other threads too, which is why my request was in the plural.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33208546
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33208557
then I must contend that these were flagged by the humourless mediocrity police, a tribe I discarded any respect for at least three decades ago.
The problem with stuff like that is that everyone overestimates how funny their jokes are. Mostly they're just lame. The gold standard HN explanation about this was by scott_s many years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289