The thing about 4chan (all boards) is that, even when an anonymoust poster makes a good point, it's usually wrapped in hyperbole and meanness. It's not a requir

The thing about 4chan (all boards) is that, even when an anonymoust poster makes a good point, it's usually wrapped in hyperbole and meanness. It's not a requirement of being anonymous, but it's a part of the culture of imageboards: you're expected to be brash about anything you don't like. If you don't, you come off as a newbie. This is why I think anything that happens in 4chan should stay there: because the very culture of 4chan only makes sense there. When you take it to a site like HN, where anonymity is less common, you make the discussion unilateral. A HN user is probably not going to say everything they think about /g/ under an username that's associated with their real name elsewhere. So we have /g/ telling everything that's wrong with HN (with the usual hyperbole) but not HN telling everything that/s wrong with /g/, either for fear of reprisal or fear of a ban. I don't really frequent /g/, but I suppose that we could point out their flaws and stereotypes too, like they do to us (that HN is too supportive of Apple, that we're entrepreneur wannabes, that we take ourselves too seriously, that we're "design hipsters" (?)) but since we don't have the absolute anonymity and brazen attitude of 4chan, we'll never make this discussion truly honest. As for their complaint about our pretentiousness: when you're writing under your name, or for your company, there's no way of not being a little pretentious and taking yourself too seriously.