In my opinion, yes. HN has been a significant contributor to my cynicism. There have been enough submissions in the past where I already knew what to expect fr

In my opinion, yes. HN has been a significant contributor to my cynicism. There have been enough submissions in the past where I already knew what to expect from the comments section, especially in cases where my stance on the matter is already firm/obvious (such as with tech regulation, climate change, complaints about Twitter threads being reposted to HN, articles about social media dooming us like this one). My reaction to these cases is typically along the lines of "yes, we know this bad, but what's going to change? What does continuing to complain here accomplish?" It's largely the same mechanism as those other toxic media platforms, and yet HN often falls for it as well. The band of people who decry Twitter et al. at the usual opportunities has persisted for years at this point, and they are unlikely to ever exit this community for good. Yet it's trivial from force of habit to click through to the comments anyway and continue to expose oneself to the usual negativity. And I don't even use Twitter anymore - it's not like I disagree with many of those negative opinions. But after years and years of reading the same tired arguments, that negativity seems to transcend its original context to worm its way into your thought process as a general, persistent haze.