I've made a couple suggestions for humorous and/or trivial badges, which have been met with much ire. Maybe I should have asked before posting such suggestions (and losing much repute therewith).
Are badges only to be used for serious purposes--to drive desired behaviors through rewards akin to graduates recieving honors--or is there a place for humor and eccentricity in their application?
The blog has a few entries on badges that might help explain the rationale
https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/stack-overflow-badge-feedbac/
https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/12/badges-positive-only/
Badges exist to reward and encourage the kind of positive behavior we want in our community. But not everyone seems to understand that. It’s tempting to suggest “funny” badges which reward behaviors that, if you really sat down and thought it through, are actually negative.
A tiny bit of humor is tolerated there, ala Tumbleweed, but in general it's to encourage positive community behaviors first and foremost.
You're looking at this backwards.
You can't really just say that a badge exists "for humor", unless it's completely irrelevant to how people use the site. Adding a badge will always drive some sort of behavior, whether you wanted it to or not, so you can't avoid considering the impact of that behavior.
Generally they are tied to "work hard and you will be rewarded before you know it". They are intended to be a surprise and a gift, not a right.
Having said that, there are a few playful badges, such as the hacker badge (not yet awarded). Ok, that's the only one I know of, but I've been led to believe there are a few.
So, the short answer is: They are intended to be pursued only by good and fair use of the site. We may game for one every now and again, but generally you won't be able to game all of them, and as a conscientious user of the site I ask you to not try to game for any of them. Just use the site normally and eventually you'll get the ones you've earned.
I personally think that there could be place for some partially humorous badges, or new "serious" badges which simply have funny (yet normal) names. Still, no badges should promote bad (in any way) behavior.
Actually, there already is a badge which doesn't always promote or reward hard work. Tumbleweed badge is what I mean. Sometimes it's rewarded to very good, yet very difficult and detailed questions. And sometimes it's rewarded to very poor questions, as a side effect. In both cases questions get very low attention.
