I likely learned about it from Reddit or from a peer in University. HN is likely part of a lineage of online discourse. I was introduced to that lineage with s

I likely learned about it from Reddit or from a peer in University. HN is likely part of a lineage of online discourse. I was introduced to that lineage with slashdot. Slashdot -> digg -> reddit -> HN was the likely path. A lot of comments here are in the spirit of slashdot, but HN punishes "funny" comments so is a bit more serious. I imagine slasdot was ultimately a child of usenet. I think SomethingAwful and metafilter and the greater phpBB ecosystem were also in there somewhere. There are likely related lineages with IRC, Slack, TeamSpeak/Ventrillo, and discord.