The reactions still seem to be pretty random -- about as random as reactions on reddit, to be perfectly honest. If I were really focusing on points, I suspect I would adopt a strategy like "don't ever reply to a comment, nobody ever up-votes conversation" -- and then this comment wouldn't have been authored.
Just to quantify the above statement: there is a group of "typically good" posts which I often get 6 or 7 points for: this included 7 for explaining what a plasma is, 7 for explaining how to do square roots and complex numbers with 2x2 matrices; 7 for discussing WTFs on the IRS tax forms, 6 for re-encoding hard-to-read XML as easy-to-read JSON, 6 points for explaining how French copyright law doesn't recognize the public domain.
That's a pretty esoteric set right there. It pales in comparison to the "big hitters." I got an unexpected 27 points for rickrolling Hacker News. I got an unexpected 20 for speculating non-constructively on whether there is a programming "voltage" equivalent to match the metaphor that most programming instructions are like force fields.
Apparently overloading the words "life" and "lolcats" to metaphorically refer to a quality living and the distractions on the internet, and doing it in the only appropriate way possible, is offensive. Okay, I can accept that. The other thing I've discovered was offensive was pulling out a Linus Torvalds quote and saying "this is insanely important, here's why" is offensive if those reasons are ultimately religious in nature.
Those boundaries are not possible for me to know unless I test them, and no, I don't pretend to know what all of them are. It is again a bit of a religious thing, and sorry. It boils down to this: basically, I suck. I will make mistakes, cross boundaries, and not know what the hell I'm doing.
That is a most important thing for me. It means that I have room to grow. And that's what I strive to do whenever I see a comment getting modded steadily downward.
There is no set type of post that gets votes. But the general rule is: Is it helpful? Does it teach? Does it detail interesting points? (If you notice all but one of the things that you posted that got points match those.)
Basically discourse. You don't always have to have super comments. You can just talk, and argue - you may not get points for it, but that's OK, and sometimes you'll be pleasantly surprised. And you won't usually get downvotes. Unfortunately sometimes you will (like the Linus comment). I've had it happen to me too, it's not pleasant but you have to ignore it. If you know your comment was good, then just accept it and move on.
(Small message to newcomers: Don't post anything provocative until you build up a Karma cushion or you may end up with a killed account. And you won't be told if that happens!)
Things like that picture you posted are just stupid. Reddit makes you think people like it, but actually people find it annoying. Or perhaps people like it sometimes when they are in the mood. But that's not what this site is for - different sites for different purposes.
Jokes also don't go over well, except in rare cases (apparently your rickroll was - but don't do it often, it's rare). The reason people dislike jokes is that they have a tendency to take over sites, and people are very worried about that happening here. But they are accepted rarely - which is exactly what people want - mostly good stuff with a small smattering of levity.
So when you have a joke, combined with a stupid sentence like the one in the picture you get massive downvotes. You may think that overloading the meaning of the words is the problem. But if you had written "Was there quality of life before the internet?" you also would have gotten downvotes since it's an empty sentence - if you want to talk about that then keep going, don't just raise the question (if you notice other people did in fact talk about this very topic). Putting that in a image instead of in text made it much worse, using "lolcat" made it worse. Combine everything (joke, image, empty sentence, lolcat) together and the downvotes are quite expected.
