5 ms·

> It optimizes against controversy and vitriol rather than encouraging it [...] a bunch of nerds mostly talking shop Something doesn't add up here. Nerds talki

> It optimizes against controversy and vitriol rather than encouraging it [...] a bunch of nerds mostly talking shop Something doesn't add up here. Nerds talking shop and controversy and vitriol about the their technical preferences is the same thing. Perhaps what you're saying is that controversy and vitriol is only apparent when you're an "innocent bystander" who doesn't have a passion for the subject? Which HN avoids by usually remaining focused on a fairly narrow set of subjects, to a user base generally passionate towards those subjects, so you don't notice? That is an astute observation, if that is what you're trying to say. Indeed, if you showed your non-technical grandmother HN, she would no doubt see it the way Facebook was talked about earlier.

solardev 2y ago
OK, but I think there's a pretty big difference between "Next.js is too bloated, you should use HTMX" and "so and so group of people are all _____ and they should all be ________, and oh, your mom sucks". I don't think – I hope, at least – no one is going to start a shooting war over their framework of choice. You can't say the same about much of the content circulating around social media. (Edit: You added more to your post after I replied. To your point of "Which HN avoids by usually remaining focused on a fairly narrow set of subjects", that's not just my observation, that's the actual guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We self-select into a narrow slice of nerdtalk or we end up getting downvoted or banned from the site. To me that is the big difference between an interest-based forum that generally stays a functional monoculture vs a general social media site that brings diverse strangers together into shouting wars about whatever the controversy du jour is.)
- randomdata 2y ago
  > there's a pretty big difference between "Next.js is too bloated, you should use HTMX" and "so and so group of people are all _____ and they should all be ________, and oh, your mom sucks". Is there? Perhaps the trouble here is that your examples are too far apart to recognize how they compare? What if Facebook, instead, said "Fat workers are too bloated, you should hire skinny workers"? Or if HN said "so and so projects are all ____ and they should all be ____, and oh, your vacuum doesn't suck". I see no practical difference. It seems the only difference is that Facebook tends to talk about people, HN about tech. But that's not a significant distinction – aside from where your interests lie. Certainly tech-minded folks often find people to be uninteresting.
  - solardev 2y ago
    I think it's just the different degree of emotional attachment people to have to these topics. Yeah, people can get a bit worked up about how annoying JS development has become, but not quite to the same level as the major headlines of the day about the latest Middle East controversy/Soviet threat/identity politics thing. Oh, and my vacuum does suck just fine, thank you very much.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > not quite to the same level as the major headlines of the day about the latest Middle East controversy/Soviet threat/identity politics thing. Why do you say that? I share in the tech-minded proclivity towards not having much interest in people, so I admit to being largely out of the loop, but what is there to be worked up about where you wouldn't equally get worked up around some tech-based topic? It just sounds boring an uninteresting to me. When I have encountered discussions about those topics, all I have is some laughter at how silly the people sound. Just like I'm sure how the "Next.js is awful" conversations sound to the metaphorical grandma.
      - solardev 2y ago
        You, yourself, might just be different/lucky then :) Or you could just be typical here. The average HN user is probably not representative of the average person in the overall population. It's a self-selecting crowd of nerds, many of whom aren't all that interested in more worldly topics. (Nothing wrong with that, mind you. It's part of the reason I'm here and not on mainstream social media.) But out in the greater society, people get all worked up about those other topics, and will go protest in the streets, blockade representatives' houses, send death threats, rage endlessly online, attempt assassinations, go on shooting sprees, etc. Those things are usually triggered by some emotional attachment to some tribal identity and anger towards some out-group. In a monoculture like this, we're mostly peers. Yeah, we might disagree about some particular things, but there's less of an "us vs them" mindset as you see politics, geopolitics, values-based communities, etc. Discussions of technical merit, even when heated, thankfully don't reach those emotional heights quite as often. In my experience, at least...

solardev 2y ago

OK, but I think there's a pretty big difference between "Next.js is too bloated, you should use HTMX" and "so and so group of people are all _____ and they should all be ________, and oh, your mom sucks". I don't think – I hope, at least – no one is going to start a shooting war over their framework of choice. You can't say the same about much of the content circulating around social media. (Edit: You added more to your post after I replied. To your point of "Which HN avoids by usually remaining focused on a fairly narrow set of subjects", that's not just my observation, that's the actual guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We self-select into a narrow slice of nerdtalk or we end up getting downvoted or banned from the site. To me that is the big difference between an interest-based forum that generally stays a functional monoculture vs a general social media site that brings diverse strangers together into shouting wars about whatever the controversy du jour is.)

randomdata 2y ago
> there's a pretty big difference between "Next.js is too bloated, you should use HTMX" and "so and so group of people are all _____ and they should all be ________, and oh, your mom sucks". Is there? Perhaps the trouble here is that your examples are too far apart to recognize how they compare? What if Facebook, instead, said "Fat workers are too bloated, you should hire skinny workers"? Or if HN said "so and so projects are all ____ and they should all be ____, and oh, your vacuum doesn't suck". I see no practical difference. It seems the only difference is that Facebook tends to talk about people, HN about tech. But that's not a significant distinction – aside from where your interests lie. Certainly tech-minded folks often find people to be uninteresting.
- solardev 2y ago
  I think it's just the different degree of emotional attachment people to have to these topics. Yeah, people can get a bit worked up about how annoying JS development has become, but not quite to the same level as the major headlines of the day about the latest Middle East controversy/Soviet threat/identity politics thing. Oh, and my vacuum does suck just fine, thank you very much.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > not quite to the same level as the major headlines of the day about the latest Middle East controversy/Soviet threat/identity politics thing. Why do you say that? I share in the tech-minded proclivity towards not having much interest in people, so I admit to being largely out of the loop, but what is there to be worked up about where you wouldn't equally get worked up around some tech-based topic? It just sounds boring an uninteresting to me. When I have encountered discussions about those topics, all I have is some laughter at how silly the people sound. Just like I'm sure how the "Next.js is awful" conversations sound to the metaphorical grandma.
    - solardev 2y ago
      You, yourself, might just be different/lucky then :) Or you could just be typical here. The average HN user is probably not representative of the average person in the overall population. It's a self-selecting crowd of nerds, many of whom aren't all that interested in more worldly topics. (Nothing wrong with that, mind you. It's part of the reason I'm here and not on mainstream social media.) But out in the greater society, people get all worked up about those other topics, and will go protest in the streets, blockade representatives' houses, send death threats, rage endlessly online, attempt assassinations, go on shooting sprees, etc. Those things are usually triggered by some emotional attachment to some tribal identity and anger towards some out-group. In a monoculture like this, we're mostly peers. Yeah, we might disagree about some particular things, but there's less of an "us vs them" mindset as you see politics, geopolitics, values-based communities, etc. Discussions of technical merit, even when heated, thankfully don't reach those emotional heights quite as often. In my experience, at least...