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Using a HN post to talk about something unrelated you wanted to talk about anyway, has been part of HN for years. Probably because a lot of people feel with the

Using a HN post to talk about something unrelated you wanted to talk about anyway, has been part of HN for years. Probably because a lot of people feel with the rise of 140-character type social media, there are fewer and fewer venues on the internet where you can substantially talk to educated and non-brand-hustling people about the things that you think about.

dingnuts 1y ago
this website exists as an advertisement for a brand. the people here are hustling harder than anywhere! it's worse than LinkedIn! that's why this website is a constant dick measuring contest -- it's a news site run by a venture capitalist firm about startups! Why would you think this place is not absolutely full of shills? the Internet is so dead, I'm sure I'm arguing with a bot. I need to go outside..
- HeinzStuckeIt 1y ago
  HN is definitely founded by a creepy VC firm and some of the posts get comments by startup-culture hustlers. But most posts don't. Instead you find the same broad population of people looking for news for nerds that used to be on Slashdot etc. HN's interface, and showing just a username in a tiny font, honestly gives me less of that tiring feeling of people around me hustling a personal brand, than even the fediverse which is supposedly "healthy social media".
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  I hear you about being very sad about the internet "dying" and real engagement being gone. HN is full of bullshit, shills, charlatans, and extremely bad moderation/rules. Yet it, like Linkedin, dramatically increases your earning potential if you post here.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    Uhh, the yc job board is essentially a different site entirely than this forum.
- veryemartguy 1y ago
  [dead]
Karrot_Kream 1y ago
Yes and it's largely made the site lose the rigor it used to have. You compare it to Slashdot downthread which I don't think is a good thing. The reason I joined this site so long ago is because Slashdot was more interested in tech culture shibboleths than actual tech or business. Natalie Portman!! Hot grits! Embrace, extend, extinguish!! Unfortunate to see the same happen here but that's life I guess. The fact that the news for nerds group is so desperate to find community that they glom onto every IRC and website they can is a bit sad but I guess it's the nature of online cultures. But oh yeah enshittificiation and the year of the Linux desktop is tomorrow and Meta is going down down down or something right? On the other hand it's funny how folks who like that culture keep putting it on a pedestal. Why? It contains little predictive power. It teaches little. It's just about opining. Is it that fulfilling to find online bytes that share your opinions? I guess I use my real life friends and family for that. It's social media in a nutshell. We're more interested in finding people like us than confronting reality. When that happens at scale, you lose mass consensus. HN is but one piece of that.
- HeinzStuckeIt 1y ago
  I was on Slashdot 1998–2004 and found plenty of substantial tech discussion. The meme culture you mentioned was there, but it was usually in posts downvoted into invisibility unless you deliberately chose to browse at -1. > I guess I use my real life friends and family for that. In my region, I never had real-life friends I could shoot the shit about FOSS geekdom with. And nearly all of my friends forged in youth through shared interest in intellectual topics, drifted away from that as they married and had children and had to spend all their waking hours on family or working to support family. Where I live has a traditional cafe culture, so there is a third place for men to go to daily and interact, but the topics that can be talked about there are very limited indeed, so obviously nerds “glom onto” internet communities.
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    > I was on Slashdot 1998–2004 and found plenty of substantial tech discussion. I think this was, roughly, peak Slashdot (tho I'll admit I was probably too young to be a good judge of it at this point.) From 2004 the meme discussions started overriding a lot of the regular discussion, and by 2007 ish the site was constantly getting derailed into EEE threads the way HN is constantly getting derailed into enshittification threads. > Where I live has a traditional cafe culture, so there is a third place for men to go to daily and interact, but the topics that can be talked about there are very limited indeed, so obviously nerds “glom onto” internet communities. My point of contention is that, this form of FOSS geekdom culture has many, many venues. Do you want to hop onto IRC? HN? Reddit? Discord? It may not be mainstream but it occupies the internet in a deep, fundamental way. On the other hand actual hard-nosed technical or business content is a lot, lot rarer. The loss of a site that discusses tech to become Yet Another FOSS Geek Social Site is to me a much sadder thing; there's a lot fewer of the former and a lot more of the latter. But, as you say, I've noticed a lot of the users are really desperate for a social venue to talk about tech nerd culture and so that's what crowds out all the other discussion.

dingnuts 1y ago

this website exists as an advertisement for a brand. the people here are hustling harder than anywhere! it's worse than LinkedIn! that's why this website is a constant dick measuring contest -- it's a news site run by a venture capitalist firm about startups! Why would you think this place is not absolutely full of shills? the Internet is so dead, I'm sure I'm arguing with a bot. I need to go outside..

HeinzStuckeIt 1y ago
HN is definitely founded by a creepy VC firm and some of the posts get comments by startup-culture hustlers. But most posts don't. Instead you find the same broad population of people looking for news for nerds that used to be on Slashdot etc. HN's interface, and showing just a username in a tiny font, honestly gives me less of that tiring feeling of people around me hustling a personal brand, than even the fediverse which is supposedly "healthy social media".
Der_Einzige 1y ago
I hear you about being very sad about the internet "dying" and real engagement being gone. HN is full of bullshit, shills, charlatans, and extremely bad moderation/rules. Yet it, like Linkedin, dramatically increases your earning potential if you post here.
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  Uhh, the yc job board is essentially a different site entirely than this forum.
veryemartguy 1y ago
[dead]

Karrot_Kream 1y ago

Yes and it's largely made the site lose the rigor it used to have. You compare it to Slashdot downthread which I don't think is a good thing. The reason I joined this site so long ago is because Slashdot was more interested in tech culture shibboleths than actual tech or business. Natalie Portman!! Hot grits! Embrace, extend, extinguish!! Unfortunate to see the same happen here but that's life I guess. The fact that the news for nerds group is so desperate to find community that they glom onto every IRC and website they can is a bit sad but I guess it's the nature of online cultures. But oh yeah enshittificiation and the year of the Linux desktop is tomorrow and Meta is going down down down or something right? On the other hand it's funny how folks who like that culture keep putting it on a pedestal. Why? It contains little predictive power. It teaches little. It's just about opining. Is it that fulfilling to find online bytes that share your opinions? I guess I use my real life friends and family for that. It's social media in a nutshell. We're more interested in finding people like us than confronting reality. When that happens at scale, you lose mass consensus. HN is but one piece of that.

HeinzStuckeIt 1y ago
I was on Slashdot 1998–2004 and found plenty of substantial tech discussion. The meme culture you mentioned was there, but it was usually in posts downvoted into invisibility unless you deliberately chose to browse at -1. > I guess I use my real life friends and family for that. In my region, I never had real-life friends I could shoot the shit about FOSS geekdom with. And nearly all of my friends forged in youth through shared interest in intellectual topics, drifted away from that as they married and had children and had to spend all their waking hours on family or working to support family. Where I live has a traditional cafe culture, so there is a third place for men to go to daily and interact, but the topics that can be talked about there are very limited indeed, so obviously nerds “glom onto” internet communities.
- Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  > I was on Slashdot 1998–2004 and found plenty of substantial tech discussion. I think this was, roughly, peak Slashdot (tho I'll admit I was probably too young to be a good judge of it at this point.) From 2004 the meme discussions started overriding a lot of the regular discussion, and by 2007 ish the site was constantly getting derailed into EEE threads the way HN is constantly getting derailed into enshittification threads. > Where I live has a traditional cafe culture, so there is a third place for men to go to daily and interact, but the topics that can be talked about there are very limited indeed, so obviously nerds “glom onto” internet communities. My point of contention is that, this form of FOSS geekdom culture has many, many venues. Do you want to hop onto IRC? HN? Reddit? Discord? It may not be mainstream but it occupies the internet in a deep, fundamental way. On the other hand actual hard-nosed technical or business content is a lot, lot rarer. The loss of a site that discusses tech to become Yet Another FOSS Geek Social Site is to me a much sadder thing; there's a lot fewer of the former and a lot more of the latter. But, as you say, I've noticed a lot of the users are really desperate for a social venue to talk about tech nerd culture and so that's what crowds out all the other discussion.