> There's two parts. 1) the negativity is increasing a bit 2) the commenter came back and chose to defend/counter themselves I've noticed this, and am not inno

> There's two parts. 1) the negativity is increasing a bit 2) the commenter came back and chose to defend/counter themselves I've noticed this, and am not innocent myself. I suspect many of us have been abusing HN as a cathartic output from the frustrations of reality over the past couple of years, and as a form of escapism from the increased hysteria online in general. As an example - I recently agreed fairly clearly, with a reply challenging one of my upvoted comments... the commenter then replied with even more aggressive rhetoric - Almost as if the expectation has become that comments must be adversarial and that people are not open to changing their minds, that our only recourse is to publicly ridicule others with more aggressive rhetoric. I don't think the commenter misunderstood even, they simply couldn't change their mode even after convincing their "opponent". Discourse has basically become too adversarial.