It isn't about having, or not having, a sense of humor. It's just that Hacker News culture prides itself on maintaining a certain decorum to the discussion here... and it doesn't include internet memes, Chuck Norris jokes, or a lot of the other frivolous stuff that's accepted on Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, etc.

It's not that people here are stuffy, or humorless, or anything; we just want HN to be different, and not decay into a festering cesspool of malfeasance like Slashdot or whatever. There are plenty of places one can go to get that kind of stuff on the 'net. Here at HN, it will usually be downvoted mercilessly.

You're right - posts with nothing but a joke aren't really acceptable here. We want to discourage that sort of thing.

Well if you're right, that just means EVERYONE needs to speak out against legislation like this, otherwise who knows where the government is going to lead this nation.

Well it works well enough in modern warfare 3, though slightly noobish...

Yes, if you're going to try to make money by scamming people, obviously you're going to try to seem as legitimate as possible. And they are not necessarily trying to "promote google initiative." According to the transcript, they have you come into their office and presumably sign up for their hosting after they developed the website. All they have to do is throw up a couple signs in their office that say google and no one is going to know the difference.

edit: i'm also not saying google is NOT behind it, im just saying wait to hear all the facts.

No where in the article was there a call for a DDoS campaign. They're saying to be active in the protest of SOPA by putting it on your website and by encouraging other to do so as well: "Encourage friends, businesses, organizations, social media to take a stand along side us in the same way. Use/distribute the OpBlackOut material we’ve provided for this purpose, or make your own (but please try to be concise and indict SOPA specifically so the message is clear, unanimous and omnipresent)"

Yeah, reading it again I see the .zip file for download. I think the message would be more accessible if they had an example site that didn't didn't require one to download and unzip stuff onto your local drive. (hmm...)