This is, first and foremost, a gag manga; and it honestly doesn't have a lot of tricks, it just repeats the same few with different circumstances regardless of how much sense it makes to do so.
Tamaki, the main male lead, is used so often as a punching bag by his so-called "friends" it's honestly hard to believe they actually like him. And Tamaki is not allowed to learn his lesson until it's convenient to the plot, and sometimes he reverts. If Tamaki and the rest of the host club were real people, they'd be enemies who pretend to be close. Their motto would be "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
And Haruhi, the female lead, is defenseless around the wrong people and puts her defenses up only for the character, Tamaki, who has consistently shown a non-selfish care for her. Not to mention her common sense isn't very common.
Most relationship dynamics in this manga would never work the way shown in the manga if they were real people. They're all caricatures at best.
expectations___ said this series has no humanity, and they're right, but I think they used the wrong word. There are moments with "humanity", but there are no moments with "humans".
This is such a painful read at times. And yes, occasionally it's funny and occasionally something sweet happens... but those occasions are not nearly often enough.
And then there's the filler. You know how anime will create filler episodes that usually aren't as good as the main story? That happens in this manga. There are filler chapters, a few of them, even in the first 22 chapters.
We also have two of the characters hang around only because the author lampshaded their original stupidity and made them significantly smarter now that they need to be.
Is it the worst thing ever? No. Is it a mess? Absolutely.
If the author wrote a competent story that had consistent and realistic characterization, and we were to keep all the other elements as they are, this story would be a bleak tragedy.
It's not boring, some of it is well above average, and it's all held together by turning one's brain off.