Is it me or is HN slowly becoming a "clever comments" site? don't get me wrong I like comments that draw a smile on my face, but I think I already have that in almost every other site out there (9gag, Facebook, Instagram) please lets keep HN memes-free. I miss the old days when I used to read HN and I was kind of afraid of commenting anything because all the comments were well written, almost all of them contributed something useful, they used to have good arguments and usually only people who knew about the topic took the time to contribute something.

Actually I think these comments are usually moderated out pretty heavily on HN. Anything that does not add to the discussion is usually removed. I was surprised to see the comment you replied to still in the thread.

As a general trend, I don't think so, but this thread seems to be an anomaly. This is the first HN thread in a while where I felt like I stumbled into a default subreddit or something.

I think it's mostly HN newbies. I down-vote quips without malice even if they make me laugh. Cultural maintenance.

I've been around here for a while, but I don't usually contribute in HN, so my karma is a little low, how much karma do you need to access the down-vote button?

I don't actually know, It just happened one day. Maybe 500?