[pravda]

Well, tobacco use generally affects just the user. Alcohol is the real killer.

Alcohol users drive into school buses and kill innocent children.

Now that we have our first president who doesn't use alcohol, it's time we crack down on the alcohol users. For the children.

[purple-again]

Sorry about the downvotes man. This was a perfect witty post that I guess needed a /s for some people.

[jknoepfler]

I tend to downvote sarcastic posts on hacker news because they are sarcastic in nature, not because I disagree with their content per se. I'd encourage you to consider the idea that people downvoted this post despite understanding it, and perhaps even agreeing with the underlying sentiment. Otherwise intelligent people thought it was inappropriate in this forum.

Sarcasm is generally perceived to be a lazy and ineffective way to make an argument, because it is imprecise, tends to strawman the opposing viewpoint, and lacks precise positive claims. The belief is that if the poster actually had something to add to the conversation, they should state it clearly and precisely, rather than relying on subtext and sarcasm.

As a general rule, I think this is correct. If one can't phrase a sarcastic retort as a concrete rebuttal, one's views are likely less clear than one would like. There generally isn't any interesting reason to prefer a sarcastic variation on a response to a straight-forward one, especially in a forum where non-native language speakers, as well as individuals who do not register sarcasm, are frequent visitors.

This forum caters to a distinctly older and more highly educated demographic than reddit (or whatever), and participants are held to norms that might at first seem strange or alien.