I think that if you post anything remotely clever, it all depends on the first vote. If the first vote is an upvote, everybody will look at it as if it might be clever, because it's upvoted. If the first vote is a downvote, everybody expects it to be stupid.
I think that's one of the reasons why Reddit had a feature that would hide votes for a while, because that first vote is so powerful.
You don't need to look up any etymology because the word "ringer" is plainly a noun and so it doesn't have a past tense. I really thought the joke was so obvious that it wouldn't need any explanation, especially when posting to a memes community that would be expecting jokes.
Many people see the word "range" inside of "ranger" and mindlessly assume that it must mean they do ranged attacks. But actually, the word ranger is originally the past tense of the word "ringer", so they're the guy who you temporarily brought into your party to win some bet, but then they stuck around afterwards and became a permanent member.
That's not a pointless warning or anything. Introducing other animals can get the zoo animals extremely irritated. They can go into hunting mode or rampage mode. It's bad enough with just the humans there.
I'm good enough. I'm smart enough.... Now, who is that mysterious cat in the wall staring back at me?