HN doesn't take too kindly to jokes.

My experience is that 0 effort reddit style memeing is downvoted, while sarcasm and jokes are rewarded as long at least a minimum effort is shown.

I think that most people (me included) just didn't get the joke.

HN is a fickle beast - sometimes jokes are well-received and upvoted, sometimes they’re misunderstood and downvoted, and sometimes they’re understood and downvoted out of spite. It’s hard to read the room sometimes, especially in a text-only medium where despite commenting and interacting a lot, many of us don’t actually really know each other