I don't see why you read a comment saying that it's perfectly fine to look at negatives especially as the relate to the specific story and then want to imply someone is saying we drop all negative criticism.

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At the end of the day this feels like such a HN thread. A story can't just be a moment feel good?

It has to be reinforcing systematic injustice or a looking glass for how terrible so many have it?

It can't just be something that makes you go "huh, neat, good for him" and you move on with life?"

Again, I'm not saying it has to be that, I once again reiterate it's fine to look deeper and for negatives, just maybe actually keep it relative to the story... but just "accepting the bait" as it were...

Would it really be so terrible if all someone got out of it was a moment of a smile rather than some grand philosophical prototypical mind twisting that defines a story?

Stories don't have some sort of "answer" there's no singular reason why they all exist.

I am entirely fine with someone saying "all that is intended for this story to do is to elicit a smile". That's an entirely valid thing to say and/or goal to have.

However ... having established that as the goal for this particular story, we can ask how well it does that, compared to other stories that might also have this as their only goal. We probably should ask this, because there almost innumerable stories whose primary purpose is to create a smile, and we may as well not waste our time on the less good ones given that we have (individually and as a culture) only a finite time to tell and/or listen to stories.

The ranking is necessarily personal (subjective), and incomplete (given the scope of possible stories). Even so, if I was looking for a story to just smile at, I'd rank this one fairly low (mostly because it butts right against the more difficult questions you've asked us to put aside (for a while, at least)).