The comment I replied to wasn't any valid format at all. What makes you think my reply wasn't in jest? Because it obviously was. People just want to nitpick my obviously humorous reply (which is actually fine up to a point as my humour was nitpicking so getting nitpicky about the nitpicking is valid too).
I'm sorry my humor detector wasn't working as well as it should have yesterday. Writing doesn't have the nuances of personal conversation, and it often happens that something that was intended as humor doesn't come across that way.
I've been in your shoes here a few times, when I've posted something that I thought was obviously humorous and people took it seriously instead. It's usually happened when I avoided putting in a :-) because I felt like that would ruin the joke - and instead leaving out the :-) ended up ruining the joke.
You are taking this far far too seriously.