"humorless individual not worth working for."
I probably have 10 other things I consider before taking into account my employer's style of humor. Not to mention, the person (machine) looking at your application may or may not be the person you're going to be working with. So, by doing this, you're potentially filtering yourself out based on an algorithm or temperament of an HR person. The idea that this necessarily represents the quality of the employer is kinda strange.
A company that lets a HR person filter out my application based on a thing like that? Again, they can't pay me enough to work there.
Of course, I'm not the type of person to complain and panic when a job search takes a long time. On the other hand, I'd say that I had some incredibly good luck with my jobs so far [regarding culture fit, generally meeting great people, etc].
Actually, all my job applications are "here's what I think" sort of applications. I don't much care about complying, only showing who I am. Yes, I didn't get some jobs and probably some of my applications DIDN'T help much, but looking back, I'm glad I didn't get those jobs anyway because in the end after hundreds of applications I ususally found something that was more my style.
As somebody else mentioned, it depends on the size of the company. In some cases, you have no information about the culture or quality of the employer based on something like this. The strong pushback I'm seeing for something this obvious is wild.
If you intend to work for companies less than 50 people, this is a good strategy, but it will fall apart past that. That said, that's a valid choice if a little difficult in the current environment.
It may not even always about having financial security at that moment. Sometimes it may be about already having a cruddy job, and not wanting to just move into another cruddy job, so you suffer with the current job for as long as it takes to find the right job to replace it.