In the good old days you just wouldn't make the joke. Or you'd get downvoted into oblivion even if you apologised. It was a much better site back then.

A creative original joke should be upvoted. Save the downvotes for mindless memes from Reddit.

I sometimes wonder if we've already become Reddit, or at least are moving to that direction. The remarks and comments sometimes just aren't appreciated; if only there were more strict moderation.

We have. We became reddit about two years ago, just after dang took over. I blame the rule against complaining that HN is turning into reddit, but also dang's niceness initiatives, the interventionist moderation (particularly "detaching" negative posts from threads) and the way your own posts don't grey out any more when downvoted.

When your joke is the intellectual equivalent of "I had the weirdest dream last night...", I think an apology is in order.