[clessg]

I was about to say something nearly identical to this, but couldn't have put it better than you did! In this specific scenario, I think the joke was in good taste and might even spawn some serious discussion and questioning (as seems to be the case already).

In fact, I came to this thread wondering if such a comment (about Erlang) would be made, and I was not disappointed. I am an Elixir (/Erlang/Gleam/BEAM/OTP) fanboy and WhatsApp is basically the canonical example of OTP's strengths, so perhaps I should be outraged! But I am not, and that says a lot about the quality of the joke (it's not a "Reddit-style" joke - it actually makes one think). It's fun and enlightening to consider the ways in which Erlang's reliability guarantees can be hamstrung by (presumably) external factors such as DNS/hardware/BGP, and a good reminder that things are messier than just which language or platform one chooses.

Anyway, yes. I would distinguish between enlightening jokes that arouse curiosity, and Reddit-style low-quality "humor" and trolling.