6 ms·

Ask HN: Why do HN users avoid humor?

19 points by dataker 12y ago

VOYD 12y ago
Because humor is dead.
monroepe 12y ago
Yeah for some reason this is one of the few places online where I don't feel like trolling. It's weird.
proactivesvcs 12y ago
I don't, but I'm new here. I'll just hide behind my dry British wit; it's done me sterling service so far.
stray 12y ago
Inability to detect it?
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Because most people don't get most people's jokes. It's why we have TV comedians: to create a collective reservoir of commonly-known humor, no matter how low-brow.
kaolinite 12y ago
Personally, I find Hacker News to be a breath of fresh air in that regard. Every other discussion area on the Internet is full of jokes - some funny, many not - and it frankly becomes tiresome after a while, everyone trying to come up with a witty comment. There's definitely a place for that (I love a good joke too) but I think it's great that there's a place for mainly serious discussion. If you want a laugh, there's everywhere else on the Internet.
snarkyturtle 12y ago
There are lots of avenues for humorous programming jokes, Twitter and reddit being the most common. HN's system isn't exactly robust so I figure people stick to those other avenues because they get the most gratification (through upvotes and retweets). HN's always been sort of a refuge from those sites for that reason. It's a place to discuss software seriously.
dang 12y ago
HN users don't avoid humor, but most humor in internet comments is repetitive, obvious, or otherwise a bit lame, so it tends to lower the signal/noise ratio and get downvoted. This is controversial because people overestimate how funny their jokes are, especially to a large general audience, and prefer to interpret downvotes as humorlessness of others. I think scott_s described this best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289. (Note the phrase, "When you have N people"—it explains many things about HN.) HN's culture is probably also influenced by Reddit loss aversion syndrome, given that it started as a kind of alt-Reddit (I don't want to say anti-Reddit!) and still has the younger sibling's tendency to compare. As a Canadian I'm tempted to say we're Canada to Reddit's U.S., but I may not be allowed to say things like that any more.
- tehwebguy 12y ago
  I think one of the other benefits of generally rejecting humor on HN is less sarcasm, which seems to increase the level of conversation. There are some "humorous" sarcastic responses to this Ask HN, even if they were funny I feel they form a dead end to the discussion.
  - dang 12y ago
    I think sarcasm is more of a problem on HN than lame humor is. Humor doesn't always succeed, but at least it's intended to make others feel good. (Think "good humor".) Sarcasm is only marginally related to humor. It's really about scorn. Sarcasm is verbal bile. It feels good to let it out, but it acidifies the environment. It feels like you're being smart, but usually is more of a tic, like eye-rolling. A community with high sarcasm levels is like a room full of eye-rollers—not a great place for conversation. I think that's why you correctly identify it as a dead end.
0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
Because HN users are afraid of downvotes.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
  Very funny.
partisan 12y ago
As long as there is truth in your humor or humor in your truth then I think it has a place here. I don't avoid it, myself.
ddorian43 12y ago
Because it's hard to be funny, most people aren't funny.
minimaxir 12y ago
The issue isn't that Hacker News isn't a more serious site; the real issue is that most people are bad at humor. HN submissions like "My startup is the Uber for hipsters!" or "Top 10 ways to #disrupt" done ironically is not biting satire. (please don't do ether unironically.) Posts and comments which are more lighthearted but still provide additional insight are fine, though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8140290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8140290 Yes, I am being a little hypocritical with that example. :p
Red_Tarsius 12y ago
HN prides itself on the insightful comment section. Each and every comment adds depth to the conversation. No other web site fosters this culture. I guess users avoid it for the same reason you don't tell naughty jokes in the workplace: It's just not the right place. On the other hand, I read many comments who were funny AND insightful, especially in XKCD and Dilbert threads.
bdcravens 12y ago
A lot of humor you see on other sites tends to devolve towards perversion; I think the programmer community is a bit more sensitive towards sexism. Moreover, the goal is to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio, and as seen on Reddit, it's very easy for the conversation to turn into mostly dad jokes and links to "meme" images. On a related note, I'm surprised that ChangeTip hasn't been implemented here (though if it were, I imagine it would quickly get banned)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
DanBC 12y ago
Many interesting online communities have suffered greatly because bad humor becomes one of the acceptable memes and thus derails any thread that mentions one of the meme trigger words - a cascade of posts follow that everybody has read before.
bjourne 12y ago
Slashdot went down the drain, in part because of "humor". All posts would be commented with stupid permutations on the "In Soviet Russia" joke. 99.9% of all those comments where dead boring. Just go to /. today and look at the "funny" comments, it's just spam. I'm a big believer in that you should do what you do best. Hackers are often smart, informative, insightful and knowledgable about lots of stuff, but rarely are they funny. There are way better sites to visit if you want funny.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
vgeek 12y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTOuGZvR9dQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTOuGZvR9dQ
Gustomaximus 12y ago
In my sample of one, HN is a site to be treated differently to entertainment sites. If you see my Reddit account under the same username its choc full of one liners, puns and glib comments. I quite enjoy reading and making these. Here I feel a bit like a privileged guest in that I'm marketing, not technical and corporate, not start-up (yet atleast). I add comment only where I feel I will give community insight, or I have a relevant question. I really enjoy HN for what it is, even though much of the technical articles are not for me. While humor in itself is not a bad thing here, I would hate to see HN move in any way towards reposting, circlejerk or popularity/karma contests. For that reason I am very selective in my votes to push comments and articles that truly add insight/interest for the startup world, and not just something I personaly find interesting or amusing.
JacobAldridge 12y ago
As noted by others, we don't avoid humor we avoid the obvious, the superficial, and that insidious community-killer 'the in-joke'. Throwaway lines are rarely well received because they add minimal value (if any) to the conversation, which is HN's primary criteria. Where humor is well done, and adds value, I've always found it to be well received. See, for example, one of my 'highest rated' comments in a discussion about 'The Miracle of Compound Interest'. The OP (now offline, so iirc) argued in favor of higher estate taxes because compound interest over future centuries guarantees wealth would become unfairly distributed to a small number of families. I chose humor to pick holes in the theory rather than economics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812221 [Edit] I realised some throwaway lines do add value, when I remembered this comment in a discussion about eating bark after the collapse of civilization received even more love than the OP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842857
MalcolmDiggs 12y ago
Because fuck you, that's why.

19 points by dataker 12y ago

VOYD 12y ago

Because humor is dead.

monroepe 12y ago

Yeah for some reason this is one of the few places online where I don't feel like trolling. It's weird.

proactivesvcs 12y ago

I don't, but I'm new here. I'll just hide behind my dry British wit; it's done me sterling service so far.

stray 12y ago

Inability to detect it?

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Because most people don't get most people's jokes. It's why we have TV comedians: to create a collective reservoir of commonly-known humor, no matter how low-brow.

kaolinite 12y ago

Personally, I find Hacker News to be a breath of fresh air in that regard. Every other discussion area on the Internet is full of jokes - some funny, many not - and it frankly becomes tiresome after a while, everyone trying to come up with a witty comment. There's definitely a place for that (I love a good joke too) but I think it's great that there's a place for mainly serious discussion. If you want a laugh, there's everywhere else on the Internet.

snarkyturtle 12y ago

There are lots of avenues for humorous programming jokes, Twitter and reddit being the most common. HN's system isn't exactly robust so I figure people stick to those other avenues because they get the most gratification (through upvotes and retweets). HN's always been sort of a refuge from those sites for that reason. It's a place to discuss software seriously.

dang 12y ago

HN users don't avoid humor, but most humor in internet comments is repetitive, obvious, or otherwise a bit lame, so it tends to lower the signal/noise ratio and get downvoted. This is controversial because people overestimate how funny their jokes are, especially to a large general audience, and prefer to interpret downvotes as humorlessness of others. I think scott_s described this best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289. (Note the phrase, "When you have N people"—it explains many things about HN.) HN's culture is probably also influenced by Reddit loss aversion syndrome, given that it started as a kind of alt-Reddit (I don't want to say anti-Reddit!) and still has the younger sibling's tendency to compare. As a Canadian I'm tempted to say we're Canada to Reddit's U.S., but I may not be allowed to say things like that any more.

tehwebguy 12y ago
I think one of the other benefits of generally rejecting humor on HN is less sarcasm, which seems to increase the level of conversation. There are some "humorous" sarcastic responses to this Ask HN, even if they were funny I feel they form a dead end to the discussion.
- dang 12y ago
  I think sarcasm is more of a problem on HN than lame humor is. Humor doesn't always succeed, but at least it's intended to make others feel good. (Think "good humor".) Sarcasm is only marginally related to humor. It's really about scorn. Sarcasm is verbal bile. It feels good to let it out, but it acidifies the environment. It feels like you're being smart, but usually is more of a tic, like eye-rolling. A community with high sarcasm levels is like a room full of eye-rollers—not a great place for conversation. I think that's why you correctly identify it as a dead end.

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago

Because HN users are afraid of downvotes.

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
Very funny.

partisan 12y ago

As long as there is truth in your humor or humor in your truth then I think it has a place here. I don't avoid it, myself.

ddorian43 12y ago

Because it's hard to be funny, most people aren't funny.

minimaxir 12y ago

The issue isn't that Hacker News isn't a more serious site; the real issue is that most people are bad at humor. HN submissions like "My startup is the Uber for hipsters!" or "Top 10 ways to #disrupt" done ironically is not biting satire. (please don't do ether unironically.) Posts and comments which are more lighthearted but still provide additional insight are fine, though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8140290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8140290 Yes, I am being a little hypocritical with that example. :p

Red_Tarsius 12y ago

HN prides itself on the insightful comment section. Each and every comment adds depth to the conversation. No other web site fosters this culture. I guess users avoid it for the same reason you don't tell naughty jokes in the workplace: It's just not the right place. On the other hand, I read many comments who were funny AND insightful, especially in XKCD and Dilbert threads.

bdcravens 12y ago

A lot of humor you see on other sites tends to devolve towards perversion; I think the programmer community is a bit more sensitive towards sexism. Moreover, the goal is to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio, and as seen on Reddit, it's very easy for the conversation to turn into mostly dad jokes and links to "meme" images. On a related note, I'm surprised that ChangeTip hasn't been implemented here (though if it were, I imagine it would quickly get banned)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

DanBC 12y ago

Many interesting online communities have suffered greatly because bad humor becomes one of the acceptable memes and thus derails any thread that mentions one of the meme trigger words - a cascade of posts follow that everybody has read before.

bjourne 12y ago

Slashdot went down the drain, in part because of "humor". All posts would be commented with stupid permutations on the "In Soviet Russia" joke. 99.9% of all those comments where dead boring. Just go to /. today and look at the "funny" comments, it's just spam. I'm a big believer in that you should do what you do best. Hackers are often smart, informative, insightful and knowledgable about lots of stuff, but rarely are they funny. There are way better sites to visit if you want funny.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

vgeek 12y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTOuGZvR9dQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTOuGZvR9dQ

Gustomaximus 12y ago

In my sample of one, HN is a site to be treated differently to entertainment sites. If you see my Reddit account under the same username its choc full of one liners, puns and glib comments. I quite enjoy reading and making these. Here I feel a bit like a privileged guest in that I'm marketing, not technical and corporate, not start-up (yet atleast). I add comment only where I feel I will give community insight, or I have a relevant question. I really enjoy HN for what it is, even though much of the technical articles are not for me. While humor in itself is not a bad thing here, I would hate to see HN move in any way towards reposting, circlejerk or popularity/karma contests. For that reason I am very selective in my votes to push comments and articles that truly add insight/interest for the startup world, and not just something I personaly find interesting or amusing.

JacobAldridge 12y ago

As noted by others, we don't avoid humor we avoid the obvious, the superficial, and that insidious community-killer 'the in-joke'. Throwaway lines are rarely well received because they add minimal value (if any) to the conversation, which is HN's primary criteria. Where humor is well done, and adds value, I've always found it to be well received. See, for example, one of my 'highest rated' comments in a discussion about 'The Miracle of Compound Interest'. The OP (now offline, so iirc) argued in favor of higher estate taxes because compound interest over future centuries guarantees wealth would become unfairly distributed to a small number of families. I chose humor to pick holes in the theory rather than economics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812221 [Edit] I realised some throwaway lines do add value, when I remembered this comment in a discussion about eating bark after the collapse of civilization received even more love than the OP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=842857

MalcolmDiggs 12y ago

Because fuck you, that's why.