More because people thought it would be funny than because they thought it was a fit for the program. Many knew, and 'idlewords acknowledged several times, that it wasn't.
The original announcement said:
At the end of the month, we'll rank the startups and YC will fund two. The ranking will depend both on upvotes and on the quality of discussion, similar to how the ranking of stories works. We can talk about this in the comments, but to answer one question I know will come up: Upvotes are an important factor but they're too brittle to rely on exclusively; doing so would encourage the wrong kind of trying to game the system. So we're going to gauge community interest both by upvotes and comments, and in case of doubt I'll make the final call—or better, figure out a way to put the final call to the community.
All this says is that (a) upvotes and comments will be used to rank the startups, and that (b) YC will then fund two. It doesn't say they'll use the ranking as the sole criteria. It seems obvious that an organization giving away bags of $20k will exercise some kind of discretion beforehand.
