What is the point that is being missed? I thought the design was pretentious minimalism. It's minimal for the sake of it, not minimal because it's distilling

What is the point that is being missed? I thought the design was pretentious minimalism. It's minimal for the sake of it, not minimal because it's distilling the essence of something. The essence of HN is not the orange and grey colors. It's really hard to connect the shirt to HN when I look at it. The essence of HN to me is karma, usernames, YC, up/downvotes, programming, America, internet companies, drama, PG love / hate. Just printing something like "100 points" on the grey background would have made it much more wearable. Also, if what you want is an appropriately critical, non-cynical community, you need to embody those qualities yourself. There's not much lower you can go than taking passive aggressive swipes at random posters. If you're the leader of a community, and you don't like the community, it's your responsibility to do something about it. Here's one idea: an official recommendation from you of upvotes for thoughtful replies (even in the case of disagreement), and downvotes for replies that don't add to the conversation.