As far as I can tell, there's no level of satire so heavy-handed and unsubtle that it won't get a reply taking it seriously. If anything, the more obviously ridiculous your suggestion, the more urgently HNers want to disagree.
Yeah, I don't think "surely no one seriously believes this" is viable now, if it was before. Of course, what you choose to do with that conclusion is still up to you.
I've been on the internet a long time. There are enough weirdos out there to make you understand humor doesn't scale, and it definitely doesn't scale across cultures.
Things are different when you actually know people but we killed that when we killed forums.
tbf, there's also almost no level of satire about business ideas so heavy handed and unsubtle that some HNers won't think it's an idea worth pitching to an investor...
As far as I can tell, there's no level of satire so heavy-handed and unsubtle that it won't get a reply taking it seriously. If anything, the more obviously ridiculous your suggestion, the more urgently HNers want to disagree.