If you stand in a room full of people and say "the sky is blue", you'll get a weird look at most.
If you say instead "Most of you will think it's controversial and criticise me, but I think the sky is blue - you're free to voice your opinion though", you'll get lots of people commenting (as you did) that this is not controversial and the sky is indeed blue. You can get people to spread and talk about your idea this way.
I don't think he'd waste his reputation in that way intentionally, especially when pretty much every word he utters gets to the top of the charts on this site and goes semi-viral elsewhere.
Yet, this is the first one which crossed 300 votes, as far as I can tell (only checked 8 pages back or so) and is currently the highest scoring one. It may be that it's the most interesting one too. But adding popularity didn't hurt.
Taunting?
If you stand in a room full of people and say "the sky is blue", you'll get a weird look at most.
If you say instead "Most of you will think it's controversial and criticise me, but I think the sky is blue - you're free to voice your opinion though", you'll get lots of people commenting (as you did) that this is not controversial and the sky is indeed blue. You can get people to spread and talk about your idea this way.