Yea I remember when it went down, being a lifelong user of VLC I was pretty active there. It seemed obvious to me it was a joke, but so many were sure it was not.

Happened here the other day in a Perl thread. Someone made a pretty funny (to me) joke. Having used Perl too much I appreciated the joke but some read it differently.

Like the tabs v spaces, Vim or Emacs, to me it seems funny and nothing to get riled over but some just become so invested in taking offense/personal.

You're right, one might invoke Poe's law in relation to complaints about a hat on a cone.