It has something of the feeling of a conversation heating up, with people speaking out of turn in their eagerness to participate. Well, all this is, perhaps, quite a weighty interpretation to place on a single Limerick. If you grant me this, I want to turn to the question of why it worked. The obvious response is, 'oh, come on, they're just making limericks,' which is why I did try to show that more is happening than 'just' making limericks. Nevertheless, they are making limericks, and that is an important reason for the success of this interaction.
Limericks are a genre.
Because limericks are a genre, most people understand these things. All that they really need, in addition, is to understand the turn-taking protocol, and once that is grasped, everyone knows what can be done. It's a great way of engaging people, but it's value-laden, polysemous, and ambiguous. Instead, I've found genre to be a more useful concept in understanding network-mediated social interaction. I should note that the concept of genre here is a bit beyond that developed in classical rhetoric.