the consensus seems to be that adding instructions to code that sabotage other people’s work goes too far.

Citation needed. Personally I think it was fine in this case. I work with a lot of software developers (real ones, not vibe coders; but also not strictly anti-AI), and would expect most of them to agree and get a laugh out of it.

It was done in a way that can only cause any serious trouble for users who recklessly ignore decades of development best practices. Those users will run into a wall sooner or later anyway, better let it be something relatively harmless but still severe enough to get them to actually think about what they are doing and how to make their setup more robust.