It wasn’t a joke. If the point of yichus is to announce that you have lineage that others don’t, that’s really obnoxious and not befitting a descendant of Avraham Avinu.
The idea of Yichus is to appreciate the fact that if you are descended from _____, it means that you have a certain potential as a result. Being the descendant of the Avos means that we have inherited the greatest potential possible and it is much more deeply ingrained than the potential one has as a result of being descended from more contemporary Gedolim.
My point was that we don’t value enough what it means to be descended from the Avos.
I get your point, but I’m not sure if you got mine.