[Archaeum]

Sokal notes, "While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious," and goes on to describe his anger and sadness. Indeed, he doesn't describe his effort as a hoax, but rather as an experiment. He expresses the intent of exposing intellectual laziness and ideologically-driven reasoning (specifically by the Left, with which he self-associates), so the motivation appears to be more than humor, and I'm confident he would agree with your assessment of "more scary than funny."