2 ms·
Humor is incredibly subjective. In general, a person's humor is substantially less funny to others than it is to themselves (this is a cognitive bias that profe
by minimaxir 6y ago
Humor is incredibly subjective. In general, a person's humor is substantially less funny to others than it is to themselves (this is a cognitive bias that professional comedians have to train themselves out of).
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.
- pontus 6y agoThat may be, but my impression is not that the comments are downvoted because they're not funny, but rather because they attempt to be funny. In other words, the content of the comment could be really insightful, but if it's phrased as a(n attempted) joke, it gets downvoted.
- quickthrower2 6y agoThat’s interesting in that I don’t find the pool joke funny said like that now, but given the context of that thread and the timing (what Uber was up to etc. at that time) I may have found it funny.