They think the guy misheard "tar file".
They're mocking this back and forth.
For 10 minutes.
I guess they're not really used to UNIX conventions any more than they really HAVE to be.
Still, in trying to show that this guy is stupid, they are showing to me their lack of experience.
It's very disappointing.
For those who care but don't know, "tarball" as a term has been around since the inception of "Tape ARchive" as an extension to UNIX ARchive format.
The Jargon File says the term didn't pick up steam until the late 1990s, but I recall seeing/hearing it in the mid 1990s. (I didn't touch UNIX until the early 1990s, so I wasn't there for the inception of TAR).