Heaven or Hell?

Geoffrey Pullum relates a linguist joke over at Language Log. I'm going to spoil the punchline, so go read it now―I'll wait.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like this joke just fine, although it is, perhaps, not precisely a linguist joke so much as an old standard retooled with some field-appropriate details. In any case, all this joke's variants have a flaw: there's a different and more probable punchline that always occurs to me, and it kind of short-circuits the joke. Here's the version in my head:

[Person to be mocked] dies. At the pearly gates, St. Peter says, "Before you can enter heaven, you have to try out hell and then we'll let you choose." Well, the [person] spends some time in hell and it seems really nice―Satan turns out to be very personable. Heaven, on the other hand, is all fluffy white clouds and harps and praising and booo-ring.

The [person] makes the obvious choice, and is sent to hell. Lo and behold, hell turns out to be a lake of fire with a side order of eternal torment. Confused, [person] complains to Satan, "Hey! It wasn't like this earlier!"

And Satan says, "Hello? Prince of Lies? 'All his empty promises'?" He chuckles. "I can't believe people still fall for that one!"

You see my problem: I never get to the part where the person learns a valuable and ironic lesson about how they behaved in life, because of course Satan is lying about hell―because it's hell and he's Satan.

It's possible that I'm overthinking this.

[Now playing: "Middle of the Road" by The Pretenders]

Comments

[Theophylact]

Yeah, I've seen (and heard) a number of variant forms of this joke, and they all have the same flaw.
But: they all also have the same picture of Heaven -- boooring.

So what's the neomort's logical choice here?