As I've said before: the thing is, the HN crowd is a really tough audience -- they will only be amused by jokes if they're actually funny.
If your idea of humour is "make some pop-culture reference and it will automatically be funny" or "be generically cynical about everything and it will automatically be funny" then, yeah, you're going to have a difficult time on HN.
Something like 1% or so of my HN comments are jokes. They usually do pretty well for karma. (Slightly to my surprise, the most recent one to flop completely was one that was also making a slightly serious point, and one that I don't think many HN readers would disagree with. Ah well, can't win 'em all.)
If your idea of humour is "make some pop-culture reference and it will automatically be funny" or "be generically cynical about everything and it will automatically be funny" then, yeah, you're going to have a difficult time on HN.
Something like 1% or so of my HN comments are jokes. They usually do pretty well for karma. (Slightly to my surprise, the most recent one to flop completely was one that was also making a slightly serious point, and one that I don't think many HN readers would disagree with. Ah well, can't win 'em all.)