They're not shying away from simplicity, but from ambiguity, especially when the range of possible interpretations includes being a jerk. We don't have nonverbal channels to communicate in this format, unlike in person, where positive intent has many easy ways to come across. Here the only channel we have is words, so it needs to be explicit in words. The burden is on the commenter to disambiguate.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

(Doubly so when the message is off-topic and double again when it's a cliché.)