Nobody on Hacker News Masturbates

Flagged. Internet humour is very corrosive w/r/t quality discussion (see: http://www.quora.com/Computer-Science-Research/Where-are-the...), and any community site worth their salt has to figure out ways to protect itself from it.

Quora, for instance, has in-built controls to prevent humour from overtaking the site (they've got Not Helpful flags that collapse the comment almost immediately) - on HN all we have are upvote/downvotes, and so this is, naturally, what we use to correct for humour.

For those of you who don't want to read this - author is essentially whining about HN's supposed lack of humour over his one-liner masturbation comment.

I take issue with the closing contention that masturnbation is a mundane activity:

Don't knock masturbation: It's sex with someone I love--Woody Allen in Annie Hall

Masturbation is a social stigma for some people, in that it evokes an immediate, 'uncontrollable' reaction due to conditioning. (i.e. a strict christian upbringing can be a cause of this.) Masturbation is a normal, natural thing, I think rationally we can all agree on that. But know that some people react badly to talking openly about it (or, likely, anything sexual).

Now, we can point and laugh (haha, you get embarrassed talking about masturbation!) or show some consideration, agree that some people react badly to discussing sexual topics, and don't do so on a primarily tech-focused forum like HN.