Ask HN: Why does HN hate humor?
I understand that HN tries to be pretty on topic & focused and does not appreciate unrelated comments etc. As such silly jokes etc are generally frowned upon.
However, humor can also be used to get a nontrivial point across and doesn't have to be "empty of content". It seems to me that the same point phrased as a declarative statement vs a joke are received completely differently.
For example,
1. "Tesla is overvalued because of x, y, z."
2. "Just read about x, y, z. Better call my broker and dump some shares."
Sometimes the addition of humor can show just how silly the context is, something that a formal declarative statement cannot.
So, why does HN hate humor?
47 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 238 ms ] threadClever, not at anyone’s expense and absurd to disagree with.
HN doesn't hate humour, there are cases of humour not merely tolerated, but significantly up-voted.
But most of the things people try to pass off as humour are simply just not funny to a large enough proportion that they get down-voted and flagged. Most of the "funny comments" are tired, derivative, old, or predictable riffs on things we've seen far too often. Some of us have been around a long time, and when we see things like this we just sigh. It's tedious.
Your comment (2) above, for example, just really isn't funny. It's common, unoriginal, uninformative, unhelpful, and just ... not funny.
In the case of HN, it has rules against noisy comments, further fighting against making bad jokes.
The one time I made a successful joke on HN was when Uber announced UberPool, and I made a comment asking if Uber is going into the swimming business.
Humor is easy because it barely needs to engage with the post or comment it's under to be considered a valid "joke comment".
An insightful or deeply curious comment is harder, because it more strongly needs to engage with the content in order to be a valid "insightful comment" or "insightful question".
Sometimes HN upvotes humor, when the humor offers insight or a clever summation of something.
Refugees from Reddit learn quickly that going for the funny quip or the easy jab is just as likely to get downvoted as upvoted.
1. Is it original?
2. Is it clever?
3. Am I in the mood for humor?
In the extremely rare cases where these three points converge, a black swan event occurs, the crystal is healed by Gelfling hand, and your comment gets upvoted.
Lazy or dismissive humour doesn't. It usually is a stopping point, or results in a thread of follow-up jokes deviating further and further from the actual conversations, each one trying to out-clever the previous one - a distraction far away from what was posted and intended.
That's what usually gets downvoted or outright rejected on HN.
> Topic: Service X just launched
> Comment: LOL I just read X as Y, and was imagining Z as a far-fetched consequence
Sometimes the commenter doesn't even imagine a Z and just explains a brief moment of confusion instead.
Versus a more concrete example of something I enjoyed recently:
> Topic: I wish there was an unstable AWS region to test the resiliency of my app
> Comment: They have one already, it's called us-east-1.
That wasn't hated (as I saw it) or even necessarily off-topic.
A clever or insightful joke may be upvoted, particularly if it is followed by thoughtful exploration of the topic. But "one liners," like your example, are just lazy and offer no insight or in any way elevate the conversation.
Generally speaking if you want lazy retorts and memes, Reddit or Twitter already caters to that very well. HN is something else, and two things can exist to fill different niches.
We really don't. It's not difficult to find plenty of hyperbole, boilerplate polemic and low-effort cynicism which gets voted up (or at least not voted down) and many comments here have no more effort or insight put into them than a joke or a meme. Most people here don't even seem to bother reading the linked articles, they just riff on whatever they think the title is about on first glance.
It's mostly elitism. Jokes and memes are associated with the commoners on Reddit and there is nothing Hacker News despises so much as being considered common.
It's also particularly ironic, given how many brilliant thinkers also had great (and sometimes even puerile) senses of humor. There was plenty of humor on USENET and BBSs in the halcyon days of hacker culture that HN looks back on so fondly. Obviously humor and intellect aren't inversely related but a lot of people here seem to believe so.
There's lots of crap on HN. Because it's still the internet. Just because there's a lower ratio of crap because it's HN doesn't mean people won't go out of their way to crap on it.
Example: On designers worrying about losing work to 99designs...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2378303
Stupid joke to illustrate a point, followed by actionable advice.
a. It crowds out other content.
b. It's harder to argue against a point made as a joke. Consider your examples. Let's say there is an issue with argument y. It's much more natural to point out in phrasing 1, than in phrasing 2. You look like someone who doesn't get that it's just a joke and there were some artistic liberties taken. So y is allowed to stand uncontested.
The danger of a purely joke comment is that it can open up a whole thread of more jokes and it ultimately is just noise and reduces the quality of discourse on the actual topic.
Good humor is humorous. There's something for people to get. And when they get it they feel good. They don't feel mocked They don't feel stupid - except in a "I wish I had said that" sense. It might start a conversation. But it won't start an argument. Good humor doesn't tell people "I'm clever." It shows them.
Good humor is good humored. Good luck.
Just have a read and see how many replies on most topics rarely dive into specifics and often barely scratch the surface of topics. Humous takes a deep understanding of a topic for one to see why it is hilariously amusing to some. Not something you can achieve with shallowness.
On reddit, everything needs to be a joke. That's what gets upvoted.
On HN, everything needs to show some depth and insight. That's what gets upvoted.
If HN readers want to read an endless stream of jokes, they will go to reddit. I'm sure most of us have reddit accounts.
We go to different websites for different purposes.
Not rocket surgery.
Allowing memes and jokes might have more comments with more votes but it wouldn't add any value to the site in my opinion.
When a comment has substance (food/meal), humor can enhance it (seasoning).
Furthermore, not all humor attempts are funny. Even professional comedians "bomb".. We can't force people.
This, or the jokes go unnoticed because of HN's small font size.
The bulk of the comment is not the joke, both in number of words, and ideas.
This would not only get a pass, but it would likely be recognized as a great comment in a more popular thread.
HN hates lazy comments.
HN hates ugly comments and a lot of humor is both lazy and ugly.
HN intentionally and consciously seeks to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. Humor tends to harm the signal-to-noise ratio, which further fuels HN pickiness about what kind of humor is acceptable here.
Humor on the internet is inherently challenging because it often relies on voice tone, body language and other cues to signal "This is a joke." On the internet, memes substitute imagery in a way that helps provide visual cues and the formatting here doesn't support communicating in that style, which makes humor even more challenging on HN.
If you are looking for light-hearted snark for some reason, HN is really not the place for that. There are plenty of places to find that and that's just not the purpose of this site.
One thing I like about Hacker News is that since humour isn't centred as much, crass ideas can't be cloaked in a joke and get a pass. I'll go into some Discord channel and see borderline-insensitive memes be normalized as they're "just joking" or "didn't mean any harm". That thing doesn't happen as much here as those memes would fall flat when presented plainly.
Well crafted jokes fly.
I've seen it.
1 some people are fully incapable of accepting sarcasm even when something is deliberately expressed using the word sarcasm
2 some people are easily offended and deliberately search for hostility even where none was intended
3 for some people everything is a political holy war. I have noticed that many of these commenters seems to only participate on threads of extreme social commentary lacking any hint of technical or business concern, which could suggest selective participation in subjects lacking expertise. I have also noticed that some of the highest karma HN users skillfully bait such threads
I have also noticed humor is more likely to be positively accepted when it is clever enough to escape notice by people merely skimming and when avoiding subject matter solely limited to social commentary. In these cases the humor in question can even be vaguely insulting or insensitive and still receive a positive response unlike the contrary where you have to tip toe across egg shells.
A Russian poster was discussing a Russian word that had no English translation...I forget the exact word, so let’s say it was быть. Another poster asked the Russian how to pronounce the word. The Russian’s response? “быть”. A sharp wit is always welcome, especially if it comes from “a good place”.