Nobody is actually stopping you, It's okay to receive feedback it didn't go over well though. You're welcome to like that or not just as everyone else is welcome to see it as a well made joke or not.

Pulling off humor is possible on HN if you really want to, just not usually by making the same joke the article already chided or blaming others for not seeing it as a joke. Humor is also usually better received here if it leans towards the explicitly obvious side (e.g. quotes, a laugh expression, a /s, or the like) or ties into a following seriously stated point in a way that is still meaningful without the joke. These kinds of things don't always need to be done all of the time, but it helps greatly since the default assumption starts as a serious post.

All of that aside, sometimes you can very obviously crack a real roller and have it downvoted or the discussion steered back to a serious one about the post. That's okay too, it's intentional the site isn't humor first and it's not reasonable to blame a reader for seeing it as such.