D+iz+a+n+k+Meister's Journal: Help with too much tounge in cheek

I want to talk about this thread. You will need to set your thresholds to 0 to read it all. As of the time of this writing, there is nothing that would normally be considered offensive in that thread, and there are only 9 comments to read.

Now that you've read the thread, on to my discussion:

Figure of Speech

If you don't already know what a figure of speech is, here is a good start.

If I were to say, "I'm sooo hungry, I could eat a horse," do I mean, in a literal sense, that I could consume an entire Equus caballus, bones and all, weighing in excess of 1 ton at the next meal? NO. Will I think less of your intelligence and world experience if you DO believe that I mean to consume an entire horse at my next meal? YES.

If someone says, "Information wants to be free," do they mean, as the first reply to the parent of the above thread suggests, that information is an animate object with complex desires and a social life? LOL NO. Are the owner of the first reply and the moderators who gave him +2 insightful, pedantic shit heads? YES.

Don't like that analogy? Well tough. You and that dude are still wrong. Why? Because you are misplacing the denotation for the connotation. You probably don't understand the difference between the two if you still think it is some sort of logical fallacy to say, "Informaiton wants to be free."

This argument extends to other absurd applications of pedantic, semantic, bull-oney arguments.

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Tounge in Cheek

Now, what I need help with is the following: Who in that thread is being serious, and who is trying to be funny by appearing to be serious, and thus laughing at those who believe him to be serious?

Here's how I see it:
Thread starter--being funny, not trying to be serious
First reply--seriously pedantic with serious problems
First reply to the First reply--me, so I know I wasn't being serious, yet trying to appear serious while being absurd
All replies to me or my children--seriously pedantic with serious problems
Second reply to the first reply--serious, but stoneder than me?
Third reply to the first reply--seriously funny about being pedantic
Second reply--seriously funny, and rightly moderated so.

Am I on track here? Are there a lot of people here on /. who take themselves too seriously? Or was the first reply merely a joke on me, since I recognized it as a serious reply?

Can someone fill me in please?