My experience here is that humor (especially deadpan) tends to land very poorly on HN, both because people are never contextually expecting it and because they tend to downvote it when they do recognize it, as they dislike perceived low effort comments that they don't feel are meaningfully contributing to the discussion (i.e. adding noise, not signal). HN may as well put "Don't try to be funny" in the FAQ, because it almost never works out.