Wow. I have seriously over-estimated this crowd. The saying goes that if one has to explain a joke, then it wasn't funny in the first place.

I had assumed that people reading this thread would see the humor behind linking Audi, VW, diesel and cheating. Oops. Then I assumed that readers would understand the "if it needs explaining..." remark as a reference to jokes not being funny if they need explaining. Oops again.

I'll set my lowest common denominator a bit lower next time.

Humour is regularly down-voted on Hacker News to avoid the Reddit phenomenon where humour bubbles to the top and pushes meaty comments down. Hacker News has collectively decided that humour belongs on the bottom of the thread. That doesn't necessarily mean we don't like jokes, but it's hard to tell the difference.

And yet the dismissive and sarcastic comments all too often wind up on top. For some reason, gratuitous cynicism tends to be seen as more highbrow, and appropriate for HN, than gratuitous humor. Yet the former tends to cause more rancorous discussion then the latter.

I find that dismissive & cynical comments tend to attract quick votes, but over the long term more substantial positive comments do win out. Of course, most stories don't stay on the front page long enough to have a long term...

That explains downvoting, it doesn't explain the replies that clearly did not recognize any attempt at humor. I really missed that mark.