I've had jokes upvoted here. The ingredients, as far as I can tell, were that they were original, topical, and required a bit of thought about the subject. In other words, the opposite of memes, or generic jokes that are probably retellings from somewhere else. Here's one from yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7500889

If only there were other places on the internet to get your kicks off.

Indeed - I think accepting some degree of silly humour, even if it is lame, is important, as otherwise even when you consider yourself to be not taking yourself seriously, you are in fact maintaining some degree of elitism.