Well, it was only a joke to begin with. I couldn't stand the complexity or ambiguity of YAML and one night I had a few drinks and banged out my thoughts on something better. When people started writing implementations, I realized that TOML might actually have legs and started tightening it up and removing the snarky bits. I guess these projects felt the same pain I did about config files and presto!

I think the moral of the story is: just put your whacky ideas out there and see what happens. You never know when you'll hit a chord.