
Ask HN: Does the No-Humor Policy Have Unintended Consequences? - DanielBMarkham
I had a friend send me a link to some jokes yesterday. I laughed for about an hour.<p>Then I realized that I hadn't laughed or smiled at web content in quite some time.<p>So today's topic: humorous nerdy phrases on T-shirts -- of interest to hackers or not?<p>I think humor and light-heartedness is very interesting and also good for you. I just posted "Nerdy Cute Girls. In T-Shirts" and it was deleted within minutes. There was no nudity, no profanity. It was just funny nerd jokes on shirts with cute girls under them.<p>Now I could give a shit whether HN wants to delete this post or not, and I really don't want to promote myself in those keyword areas, but the post wasn't controversial or off-topic. Lame and trivial, perhaps. But fuck dudes, there are a zillion lame and trivial posts every day. Just don't upvote them. Instead I got the immediate "what is this? Reddit?" (Which I thought was hilarious in itself actually. I could just picture some overly-serious internet curmudgeon banging away the required response)<p>So what do you guys say? Can we share jokes and light-heartedness every now and then as long as we identify in the title what it is? Or would the presence of jokes derail the community forever and lead us down a path of wanton banality?<p>I know the standard response. I'm just thinking that I've become much less happy over the last two years, and hanging out in a joke-free zone with a bunch of Mr. Spock wannabes might be part of that.<p>So while I understand the theory in "no jokes" I wonder what the long-timers think of the effect on them after a while. For those of you wanting to psychoanalyze me, probably a more useful response would be to post some links for receiving tech humor on a daily basis. This not only makes you look like less of a jerk, it helps other people with similar questions.<p>What do you guys think?
======
plinkplonk
"I just posted "Nerdy Cute Girls. In T-Shirts" and it was deleted within
minutes."

This is as it should be imo. (No I didn't flag that post - didn't see it even
but if I _had_ seen I _would_ have flagged it. )

"the post wasn't controversial or off-topic"

Of course it is offtopic. Read the guidelines. Why would anyone come to
_HackerNews_ to see "cute girls" in T shirts with "funny" jokes on them?

"Can we share jokes and light-heartedness every now and then as long as we
identify in the title what it is?"

Please, please, please don't. Plenty of options out there for people who want
these things. If there aren't and you think there is a need, create one. (Hey
startup idea?)

The answer to

"I'm just thinking that I've become much less happy over the last two years,
and hanging out in a joke-free zone with a bunch of Mr. Spock wannabes might
be part of that."

might be to hang out in other forums dedicated to posting jokes with no "Spock
like" [1] people, or even better, meet non "Spock like"people who make you
laugh in the real world. I have plenty of idiots sending me lame jokes and
they _don't_ make me laugh. Laughter in my life comes from interacting with
funny/humorous people in the real world.

The last thing _this_ HN user wants to see is to see "[Joke] blah" posts here.
I for one will mercilessly flag any of these.

I have filters for idiots who send me jokes by email. If I can get filters for
HN, i.e, if I can make specific posts/users/topics "dispappear" in my view I
wouldn't mind so much.

Just my personal opinion but you did ask "What do you guys think?"

[1] I don't think of HN users as "Spock like" at all fwiw.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
_I have filters for idiots who send me jokes by email_

* I don't think of HN users as "Spock like" at all fwiw*

Ah, the irony.

~~~
plinkplonk
"I have filters for idiots who send me jokes by email

Ah, the irony."

Not really. Let me try again emphasizing some words. I don't like --->
_idiots_ <\---- mailing me lame jokes . Your "nerd girls in funny t-shirts" is
ultra lame, for e.g. but there are some people who email such things to me
without me ever asking for them, and in spite of requests not to send them to
me. "Oh but this is so _funny_ you have to read it .."

I do have filters for such people and posts. They get to send cheesy stuff , I
get to ignore cheesy stuff, everyone is happy.

I know and interact with a lot of humorous _people_ in real life and face to
face. Being (genuinely) funny in real life (vs sending of something scraped
off the Internet to a few dozen email addresses) takes some doing, or at least
genuine insight.

Is "avoiding cheesy jokes in email and HackerNews" such a strange concept? I
think you interpret "Spock like" to mean "people not like Daniel Markham", the
lone human in a world of Vulcans ;-).

 _You_ might like getting lame jokes (sometimes with pretty girls wearing
TShirts) in your email. Nothing wrong with that. Other people don't. Nothing
wrong with that either.

But if that makes them "Spock like" in your world view, then so be it. :-)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm not feeling the love here, Plink.

There is a principal-agent problem that I just described with Ed.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1367176>

I am sure you are a very funny person and have lots of interesting friends
that send you good jokes. Hopefully I'm not on your idiot list.

There was no commentary intended towards HN'ers except we have a tendency
sometimes to be overly-analytical when lightening up a bit might be better.
That's not "you guys" that's "us guys" The question was a variation on "to
what degree is that useful on HN?"

So apologies if I offended anybody. I interpret Spock-like as the well-meaning
and useful application of the maximum amount of brainpower and logical
thinking possible to solve problems. Which is the amazing part of this
community. All good things, however, have not-so-good aspects about them.

~~~
plinkplonk
Your "principal-agent problem" seems to reduce to (emphasis mine)

"But once it became a place to hang out, _my_ goals and the site's goals
diverged."

The P_A problem is a little different.

[wikipedia] "In political science and economics, the principal–agent problem
or agency dilemma treats the difficulties that arise under conditions of
incomplete and asymmetric information when a principal hires an agent, such as
the problem that the two may not have the same interests, while the principal
is, presumably, hiring the agent to pursue the interests of the former."

The key word is "hire" or "employ".

If you enjoy a site (or a book or a movie) at certain age say, and your
outlook changes for whatever reason, that isn't really a "Principal Agent
problem". Your tastes changed. That's all. Happens to all of us.

So anyway, after your post got deleted, you asked HN if it was ok to post
"cute nerds girls with T shirts with jokes printed thereon" and you
specifically asked "what do you guys think?". Now you are getting an answer
from various people including me.

I (and I don't speak for anyone else) don't expect HN to change continuously
to meet _my_ changing expectations. If my tastes change so I value a life full
of mystery and danger should HN follow suit and become more mysterious and
dangerous? What about the _other_ HN user whose tastes changed to valuing a
life of extreme clarity and certainty?

HN has a focus which is of value to me today. If it changes to some kind of
lame humour, look-at-pretty-women site _I_ will leave (and others will no
doubt continue or join). If I suffer some brain damage/undergo a radical
personality change etc and decide to give up on hacking startups and focus on
butterfly collecting, say, I would not spend time on HN. Sure I can _ask_ it
to change I guess.

Fwiw, I am not insulted by "Spock like". I was just amused with your
interpolating it with someone setting a filter for lame jokes and calling it
"irony".

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thanks for the answer. We have no disagreement. You are not sharing me with
anything that I do not already know. I do not expect HN to change to meet my
expectations, I understand the value of focus, and I appreciate the feedback.
It's all good.

As far as the Spock thing, happy to amuse you, if you are truly amused. For
some reason, your comments sounded angry. It sounded like you were more
interested in talking about what my goals or reasons were than in the question
about humor, technology, and social sites in general. I don't mind explaining
-- in fact I'm happy to especially if you thought I was slamming the readers
here, which I most definitely wasn't doing. But I didn't get a counter-thesis,
suggestions, or much of anything useful in our chat. Perhaps I missed
something. I'm glad HN is topical and self-policing. I hope it stays that way.
Long-term use may have unintentional side-effects. What's your opinion on that
and suggestions for other readers? (repeating the topic)

~~~
plinkplonk
Let me assure you, I bear you _no_ ill will, I wish you well, I could care
less about analyzing your intentions/goal/reasons etc are :-).

I am _not_ angry and I don't see where I "sound" that way. I do think your
submission was a cheesy one, violating HN guidelines, and more importantly,
hardly insightful. It _is_ true that I don't think you have much of a "thesis"
(beyond the inapplicable Principal Agent concept) to counter.

"Long-term use may have unintentional side-effects. What's your opinion on
that and suggestions for other readers? (repeating the topic)"

I am happy with HN's focus on startups, tech and stuff of interest to
hackers/of intellectual interest to them. Any unhappiness I have with HN is
due to (perceived) _deviations_ from that focus and I don't want HN to include
"pictures of pretty girls in TShirts with lame jokes" or otherwise focus
explicitly on "humour".

I don't have any suggestions for "other readers" beyond "Stick with the HN
guidelines. Please don't post such "humour" here. Please go elsewhere for such
things. The Internet is a big place and there is a site for everyone"
(repeating the answer)

You asked a question and got an answer. Do with it what you will. Continuing
this thread (it just triggered my thread depth tripwire) would be a disservice
to other readers and so I am done with this thread.

Thanks for reading and Have a great day!!

------
edw519
The hacker news unwritten rule for humor seems to be:

    
    
      Laugh at something you can find anywhere else ---> flag
      Laugh at something that makes you think, too  ---> upvote
    

I love a good joke as much as the next guy, but I really love "hacker humor",
something that makes you think, too. Something that non-hackers may not even
understand, not because it's an inside joke, but because they haven't bothered
to raise their level of thinking to "get it".

About once a day, I read something here that really makes me laugh out loud.
Usually something very clever coming in from left field. Something I would
never find anywhere else.

I have often typed "humorous" responses myself, but I usually think better and
just close my browser before submitting. Then again, I often just let 'er rip.

You got me to thinking so I went to searchyc.com and listed my comments sorted
by descending points, looking for "humorous" responses that did get upvoted.
Here are a few examples of what others seem to have appreciated:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025798>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926644>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086527>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202154>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829338>

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thanks Ed. This is great feedback. On topic, with practical advice that can be
followed.

I find that I edit myself with humor much more than other things, especially
on HN. Interestingly enough, this seems to have carried over to real life,
with not such good results. Sometimes you just need to be yourself.

There is a principal-agent problem here as well. HN (or any other site) exists
for some sort of narrow market segment. I know I came here because I wanted to
go to one place to search and discuss items of interest to startups. From that
idea the site has evolved into "stuff that interests hackers", mainly because
there is only so much material you can mine using the narrower niche.

However, and this is interesting in terms of growth-for-content-sites, the
reason I stayed wasn't because the topic area widened up, it was because _then
it became a place to hang out with other hackers in the startup community_ ,
which I _also_ found useful.

But once it became a place to hang out, my goals and the site's goals
diverged. The site's goals is still to provide some kind of content niche that
it does well. That, after all, is what makes it useful. My goals, however, are
more like the goals anyone would have in a community: camaraderie, humor,
exploration of common ideas and problems, understanding of motivations,
discussion of mores.

There's not a lot of room between those two goals, but there is some, and I
wonder if over time the effects add up.

(I don't know the answer. I was just wondering)

------
gjm11
There is (so far as I know) no no-humour policy. There is a _humour-
isn't-enough_ policy.

Example: That paper on the dynamics of cows. 32 points, a reasonable amount of
discussion. HN-worthy because as well as being funny, it had some actual
_interest_ for, at least, a subset of HN readers.

And yes, there is a not-lame-and-trivial* policy. If some lame and trivial
things make it to the front page anyway, that's a bug not a feature, and it
isn't a reason to abandon attempts to keep lame and trivial stuff away.

No, HN is mostly not a source of things that will make you laugh for an hour.
It's also mostly not a place to get laid, or a good place to vent about an
annoying co-worker, or a good place to get constructive advice on a SF book
you're writing. Not because there is anything wrong with laughing, sex, being
annoyed, or writing SF, but because a community that tries to do too many
divergent things at once is likely to end up doing none of them very well.

And (do I repeat myself? very well, I repeat myself) that doesn't mean that HN
has a no-sex or no-annoyance or no-SF policy. If you find or create something
that's genuinely interesting to hackers and posting it happens to get you
laid, express exactly what's wrong with one of your colleagues, or help polish
your writing, no one is likely to mind at all. But it needs some HN-relevance
to belong here, and those things don't give it that.

------
raganwald
1\. It really doesn't help to have HN overlap other internet communities.
Adding stuff "of interest to hackers" that isn't really about startups or
hacking is a little like creating bloatware (Studies show that the people who
buy our code editor use Twitter to share photos. Let's add Flickr integration!
And an instant tweet hotkey!)

2\. That being said, there's absolutely no rule that says that something can't
be funny just because it "Gratifies my intellectual curiosity."

    
    
      There was a young fencer named Fitz,
      Whose blade was exceedingly brisk.
      So fast was his action,
      The Lorentz contraction,
      Reduced his rapier to a disc.
    

Question: Does Fitz's speed also reduce his _opponent's_ rapier to a disc?

~~~
Jun8
Jeez, I was waiting for the right moment to unload _this_ limerick, this post
seems ideal

There once was a lawyer named Rex With a diminutive organ of sex When charged
with exposure He replied with composure De minimis non curat lex

This is a great way to remember this Latin phrase
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis>), which by the way is of interest
to HNers, e.g. you don't report small items in your IRS return.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Every day we could have one post on HN that is something like "Say something
funny"

And keep the humor to just that.

It would add some balance, give us a place to vent/joke/whatever, and also
give the community a place to point to if commenters got out of control on
other threads

------
po
I think Hacker News should do one thing and do it well.

If you really want to laugh then there are a million and one sites to do that.
We all read other sites, it's ok for you to do that too. Hacker News shouldn't
be the one-stop-shop for all things interesting to DanielBMarkham. I'm not
sure I would want to spend as much time there (no offense).

There's a "delay" setting in the user profile if you're spending too much time
here getting all depressed. ;-)

Or maybe this… start a thread called "Ask HN: What website made you laugh
today?" and get it all out in one shot.

~~~
timwiseman
Its hard to say it better. I have a penchant for lolcats and I go to a couple
of sites with lolcats most mornings. But that is in addition to hacker news.

Definitely enjoy your humor it makes life more pleasant, but find it in
appropriate places and this not one of them.

------
ugh
I just don’t see how what you posted[1] is all that funny. I do think that
some people here on HN are quite humorless, but there are more than enough
people here who will appreciate a joke if it’s a good one. If, however, you
want to see more of the kind of humor you linked to I recommend surfing
Encyclopedia Dramatica (NAASFW).

[1] [http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/05/nerdy-cute-
gi...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/05/nerdy-cute-girl.php)

~~~
tome
Now that I've seen the post in question, the easiest answer is that the
submission just isn't funny.

------
daleharvey
pretty much every internet community has devolved into primarily sharing funny
pictures, there arent just plenty of other places to go to find funny stuff,
it is the rest of the internet.

I dont think many people think of new.yc as a humour free zone, its just the
humour has to be on the side of the content, not the content itself.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Sigh. This sounds more like an argument starting.

But here goes: XKCD. Dilbert. Cute girls with funny technology T-shirts.

Explain the difference.

I am assuming that the cute girl does not somehow render technology jokes and
drawings ineffective. You put an XKCD comic on a bosom, it's still an XKCD
comic.

EDIT: And if you say something like "but the fact it was a girl was part of
the content and not just the tech" then the point is that it's an integrated
art form. The pieces have to work together. It is still tech related.

EDIT 2 (an hour later): I made the mistake here of starting to defend my
actual article. This was off-topic from the question posed. I took the bait,
and I should have known better.

~~~
mquander
I don't think people would be big fans of XKCD or Dilbert posts here either.

~~~
ErrantX
They have been upvoted in the past (I'm not certain but I think xkcd.com might
be a banned URL now though) and hit the front page.

I think there is a distinct difference between them and "hot girls in geeky
tshirts" or whatever. Usually they were "on topic" or actually amusing!

~~~
absconditus
The Dilbert submissions that make it to the front page are not the comic
strip. They are posts from the author's blog.

------
rsaarelm
Most stuff that people think is funny isn't that funny for most other people.
So a humor-tolerating, polite community will most likely end up with lots of
trying-to-be-funny stuff that's just tired, and signal-to-noise goes down. An
option is to drop the politeness and harbor a culture where people vocally
heckle things they find unfunny. Third solution is to discourage humor.

I like low humor tolerance more than having a low signal-to-noise ratio or low
community politeness.

------
jokermatt999
As others have said, humor can be found virtually anywhere on the internet.
Hacker News is one of the few places where I know that if I see a few comments
on an article, there will be actual meaningful discussion of the content
rather than easy joke sniping. One reason why I've grown to like HN better
than reddit is that I never know what the top comment will be, except that it
will usually be a decent and generally well thought out opinion on the topic.
On reddit (and other sites, I'm using reddit as an example since I'm familiar
with it), the top comment is almost always an mildly amusing joke that I can
predict the subject of, if not get it word for word. Anywhere on the internet,
I can find laughs, but I come to Hacker News to think.

------
theBobMcCormick
You do realize you're allowed to frequent more than one community website
right? IMHO, I like that HN is kind of specialized on specific types of
content. When I want more general stuff, I'll hop over to Reddit, Digg,
MetaFilter, etc.

The nice thing about HN though is that we have great discussions around topics
that are specialized enough they'd never get "upvoted" enough to be visible on
"those other" sites.

------
RyanMcGreal
I don't know whether this consequence is intended or not, but at times HN
feels unbearably stuffy, self-important and, well, humourless.

I've always thought of hacking above all as a _fun_ activity - in the way that
posing and solving puzzles is fun ... or in the way that posing and solving
jokes is fun.

Humour is all about thinking around corners, framing and reframing a set of
premises, melding logic and creativity to produce surprising[1] results.

Killing humour to keep a hackers' discussion on-topic is like killing
inductive reasoning to keep scientists focused on the big picture.

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html>

~~~
DanielBMarkham
_but at times HN feels unbearably stuffy, self-important and, well,
humourless._

Thank you

------
Goladus
There is plenty of room for humor here without having to resort to pics of
girls in T-Shirts.

Go find the next Steve Yegge or something.

------
xiaoma
You could always register an icanhascheeseburger account.

You _will_ get a torrent of funny pictures and the comments are about as far
from Spock-like as can be found. Once you've gorged yourself and start feeling
your grip on reality grow wobbly, then come back here and spend time here in
the "joke-free-zone", as you put it.

------
nopassrecover
I agree with your sentiment but this is because of a more general conflict
between those who see Hacker News as a place about Hacker stuff and those who
see Hacker News as a place for Hackers. It's an important distinction - one
would allow "light-hearted" hacker stuff (like dailyWTF) and the other allows
"light-hearted" general stuff (like your T-Shirts, although they are kinda
borderline because they're geeky jokes but you get the point).

~~~
silkodyssey
I think the relationship between the content of hacker news and the userbase
is like an ecosystem and maintaining the fidelity of this system is necessary
to preserve the mission of the community. People are attracted to hacker news
because of the content and they in turn become a new source of similar
content. If hacker news were to allow more lightweight material to the site
then we may see users joining for that type of content and the repercussions
of this I would would be undesirable. So while the perceived authoritarian
nature of HN may be a bother sometimes I think it's a small price to pay to
keep it the way it is meant to be.

------
nkurz
I don't think I'm humourless, but I value HN as one of the few places on the
public internet where intelligent discussion is still possible without being
drowned out by regurgitated memes and fart jokes. While in theory it's
possible to have both, I haven't seen it happen elsewhere.

The comparisons to Reddit are discouraged not because they are baseless,
rather for fear that they may be self-fulfilling. Reddit used to feel like a
community as well, and I used to enjoy reading the comments there as well.
It's worth asking 'What changed?' and 'What could have been done differently?'

I just looked at your link:
[http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/05/nerdy-cute-
gi...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/05/nerdy-cute-girl.php)

It struck me as a parody of the worst possible thing you could post here: non-
funny, sexually stereotyped, ethnocentric, and devoid of insight; but with
just enough of a hook to get a significant number of upvotes. It's soft porn
with a plausible excuse. And once people saw that this was acceptable, I'm
sure we'd see more of the same.

If I were the moderator, I'd have not only deleted it but emailed you to tell
you that if you do it again your account will be banned. This isn't because
I'm against humor, or against porn, but because I can't see the community I
enjoy remaining intact while adding this sort of boorish fluff.

I don't want to pick on you too much, but did you picture the conservative
religious users being amused by this, or did you set out to offend them? Did
you consider how it might seem to a young female programmer to see your post
on the front page? I'm very far from politically correct, but I can scarcely
conceive of what you were thinking.

------
btilly
Like others have said, I believe that having a focused remit is critical to
maintaining a community. I don't want to see jokes here just because they are
funny, and possibly a little geeky. And I say this as someone who loves to
tell jokes. (See <http://www.google.com/profiles/btilly> for proof that I tell
lots of jokes. Just not here.)

------
mooism2
Why weren't there any cute boys?

Also, is HN really the only place you hang out? You might want to try hanging
out in some other places as well.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Post one and I'll upvote it.

I started googling "funny t-shirts" just on a lark last night. After getting a
zillion, I narrowed it down to "funny girl t-shirts" because I liked that
better. I like girls and looking at them made the shirts more entertaining to
me (This also had the benefit of going from hundreds of thousands of printed
jokes on jokes to a much smaller number of actual modeled shirts). That took
me to about 200 shirts. I had no idea what to do with THAT data, so I further
narrowed it to nerd jokes. Which took me to about 17.

Different paths give you different results. But really the only discriminator
was that they made me smile, and the topic was nerd stuff (which is why I
shared here)

Hacker News. Where even the jokes have algorithms

Okay. $20 bucks says if I had posted an article on "Erlang for humorous
T-shirt picture selection" I could have ran the same article with 10 lines of
code at the top and it would have been a hit.

~~~
arethuza
On a whim last year I searched for "atheist t-shirts" and to my delight found
that there are actually quite a few available and that most of appeal to my
sense of humor (mostly things along the lines of "my imaginary friend is
better than your imaginary friend" etc.).

Then I remembered we were going to Egypt on holiday and suddenly this didn't
seem like such a good idea.

(To be fair, Egypt is a lovely place).

------
ErrantX
Intelligent humour has always done well here (mostly in comments). Banality
less so. _shrug_ I quite like that.

Also: OMG geek girls is such an old and tired "joke" I'm not surprised it was
killed.

 _and hanging out in a joke-free zone with a bunch of Mr. Spock wannabes might
be part of that._

HN makes me laugh or smile daily, perhaps you are looking in the wrong places.

------
almost
There's only one thing worse than silly "FUNNY PICTURES!!! LOL!" posts and
that's posts complaining about submissions of said fluff being deaded.

We all know how to use the Internet here, so we can go to any of the millions
of places where that would be considered a top contribution any time we want.

------
lwhi
How would HN women feel about 'nerd jokes on cute girls'?

------
jacquesm
The other day there was a post here on a DAAS startup that offered 'write
once' memory in the vein of Amazon's S3, called 'S4'.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1360436>

It was very humorous, even if it was a variation on a very old theme, and I
think it made the top spot on the homepage.

This one is _also_ humorous, but not as much.

I woulnd't have flagged it, I would have just ignored it. Flags are for spam,
this was clearly some work to put together, there was no offense given as far
as I could see.

The cost of ignoring it if you're not interested is near zero, the cost of
depriving someone else of what they might like is non-zero, and unless someone
posts a page like that everyday there really is no problem.

On another note, I've seen enough DanielBMarkham posts by now to know that he
was up to something, my guess is that he was planning to have this discussion
and I thought this discussion and some of the responses in it was a nice
insight in to what motivates people to visit a certain site.

If it is OK to put a message here that the water mains in Boston has broken
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1311198>) then you have to realize I'm
in the Netherlands and that it is not of interest to 'the hacker community'
even if you're in Boston _and_ a hacker. The majority of us are _not_ in
Boston.

But that one sat on the front page for a long long time and nobody said a
word. I didn't flag it because it did not concern me. but arguably it had a
lot less to do with hacking than Daniels original post (I don't mean that in a
literal sense but as a shortcut).

Lighten up.

If you are so serious about startups and making money then you shouldn't be on
HN at all except for reading from Patio11 and grellas, between the two of them
the rest of HN is light infotainment anyway. Have a critical look at the
homepage right now and tell me why 'nerdy girls in t-shirts' is out of place
there with a straight face.

------
brk
Hey! Get off my lawn!

The thing I like about HN is that humor is appreciated but you have to work
much harder to make it original and topical.

Posting a link to someone elses humor doesn't fit the spirit of HN ( to me ).
But humorous insights in comments can be golden when well executed. And
executed if not golden. I personally enjoy the challenge and the
differentiation from other sites.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I wonder if on Reddit there are guys going "Hey! What is this? HackerNews?"

~~~
drKarl
Well I guess that it is ok to post humor on HN as long as it is intelligent
humor or gives you some insight. It's banal humor which is not desired. I see
some links to DailyWTF or XKCD from time to time and no one complains.

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imgabe
I'm not opposed to people posting whatever they like and having the community
decide via upvotes if its worthwhile. Deleting posts outright seems too heavy-
handed to me.

Personally, I look to Reddit and Fark for mindless frivolity and Hacker News
for more thought-provoking articles. You don't have to _only_ hang out in the
joke free zone. It's possible to participate in more than one community.

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absconditus
There is no reason for every discussion site to become like reedit. I am sure
they would appreciate your banal humor.

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commandar
I come to HN to get away from being spammed with picture posts I've seen a
dozen times before.

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DennisP
I go to HN to learn useful stuff for web startups. I go to Reddit for nerdy
humor. When websites specialize I can get what I want, when I want it.

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parfe
You posted a pic spam link to your own blog.

I think the consequences were entirely intended.

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thunk
So a digger, a redditor and an HNer walk into a bar.

They get drunk and have a good time.

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10ren
Your assumption: HN readers only read HN.

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ahoyhere
The day that Cute Girls N Nerdy Tshirts makes HN's front page is the day I'll
know that it's not just suspending in the air over the shark, but actually
over it.

Now, I get what you mean. HN seems largely humorless. Everybody's trying to
out-intellectualize everybody else (with a greater or lesser degree of
success).

For example: People stop using contractions, or wanna/gonna. "You are" "I am"
"It is" -- even you were doing it in your replies to what I'll call the 'Spock
subthread' here on this item.

Other signs include the (usually incorrect) applications of rhetorical/logical
fallacies, and talking about 'the facts' as if any one blog post or video
could possibly convey all 'the facts' about a situation, and that which
'facts' are chosen to be presented is not an entirely subjective thing.

When I write "gonna" etc. here and use smilies, I'm pretty sure people think
less of me. That's fine, cuz I know I'm smarter than they are. ;) But when I
write a really hilarious essay ripping something up, and that something is
related to startups or programming, it typically ends up on here one way or
the other. I'm not the only one.

Then the comments are all deadly serious. Such is the cycle of life, and HN's
tone, for better or for worse.

But HN isn't actually humorless, it just likes to keep it hidden under its
hat... you know, the one with the special proturbation up front for our
unusually prodigious forebrains.

~~~
Freebytes
To allow a meter of incongruity with the current culture would result in a
mile of abuse. I would prefer a humorless HN than a 4Chan style ego trough
(for the lulz) to satisfy people that should not be here.

~~~
jacquesm
I think part of the problem is how serious people take themselves. HN is a
reflection of all the personalities of all those that take part in it and it
exhibits a tendency to pretend to be very busy making millions of dollars,
whereas actually there seems to be more interest in which celebrity is using
what gadget.

If that's the choice, then I'll take the humorous post of Daniel any time over
the Fake Steve jobs item currently on the homepage, at 131 points and 124
comments it must be really important, or the latest joelonsoftware or
sethgoldin post that is going to make us all millionaires.

~~~
ahoyhere
_exhibits a tendency to pretend to be very busy making millions of dollars_

Haha, yeah.

But, regarding Daniel's humorous post, a combination of cute girls in geeky
shirts is more sad than funny, don't you think? In a meta sense:

"Why is this remarkable?"

It's like posing sleeping kittens and babies with 40s of Mad Dog. The humor is
in the incongruity. Meaning...

1\. We don't talk to cute girls

2\. We wish cute girls wore these nerdy shirts so we'd feel validated

3\. The girls who actually do wear these shirts, we don't like

4\. Boooo.

