What you say is true - HN might resemble a false ladder to popularity for a very small subset of teenagers - but content is at least as important as form. It's

What you say is true - HN might resemble a false ladder to popularity for a very small subset of teenagers - but content is at least as important as form. It's okay for there to be balkanized subsections of the internet that lead to serious discussion and which might occasionally lead to radical obsessions; take away the internet and that's just society in the streets of France in 1789 or Rome in 49 BC. The major difference is whether they find it or it finds them. Because if you find it, you can walk away from it once you grow up. If it finds you, you lose yourself and fail to develop the structure for independent / critical thought.