I've been reflecting on my online consumption habits, and I'm starting to question whether HN is a net positive in my life.
It's by far the most intelligent and interesting community I engage with, but if I'm being honest I think it has just made me cynical about technology, entrepreneurship and my own career.
I think my life would improve if I stopped visiting HN (and Reddit/YouTube/etc.), but it's definitely not easy to shake the addiction and the 'fear of missing out'.
That's my thoughts on the topic, but I'll put the question to you... Would your life be better if you stopped visiting HN?
It actually filled a void that Slashdot left. Something happened around the time I started visiting HN more where ./ became this really weird echochamber and hot takes were abound. Believe it or not, it seems to me like HN is one of the few places where there is a lot of self-moderated and rational discourse.
From my perspective the conversation here is generally awful. It’s the same tired faux genius rhetoric over and over again. How many times will I read “these companies are just way too bloated” as the top comment on a layoff post? It’s always written with perfect confidence as if the commenter understands the chaos of the tech industry better than anybody else. People upvote it because it sounds good without ever thinking critically about what they just read. Well written, confident, and reassuring to me (as one of the few competent tech employees)? Upvote!
How many times will people reply to the top comments with some vaguely related point they desperately want to make and that they feel is worth hijacking your attention for? Every single time.
How many times will a top comment ask questions that are clearly answered in the link? We’re not even allowed to tell them to RTFA because that’s against HN rules. Posting the comment isn’t though.
I stick around for those rare diamonds in the rough. The moments where an actual, proven genius logs in to post their yearly comment. Usually because somebody posted a link to their work and the top comment has hopelessly misunderstood it.
You're going to have to wade through garbage for high quality content pretty much everywhere, and HN has been consistent and valuable to me over the years for sure.
It used to be that most posts were worthwhile. Sad to see what it's devolved to.
I'm aghast at how many comments these days are against a startup/company doing well. It used to be Startup News, I think the branding change was the turning point.
I thought one topic was pretty amusing, where people were discussing financial planning for millionaires. The top was full of cynical replies or reddit style rants by people who aren't millionaires, like maxing out insurance. The middle had people who did make their money and lost it. The bottom-ish had the actual rich folk.
You gotta search for the geniuses. 90% of people are in the bottom 90%. Someone asks for the key to happiness. Your average person will say "diet, exercise, sleep". This is insightful to those at the bottom, and those who are above average won't disagree. Then some dude comes along and says "life is suffering" and rants about why chasing luxury is going to make you unhappy. That dude is going to be downvoted or ignored.
> I stick around for those rare diamonds in the rough.
> The moments where an actual, proven genius logs in
so you are the one to judge who is a genius :). a little condescending?
imo hn has become quora-ified. anecdotal commentary has become common.
Yes you are, it’s not against the rules. From the guidelines:
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
It’s right there as an example of what you can respond: “The article mentions that”.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Dead Comment
However, I do have a gripe. Many posts negatively impact upon my self-esteem. Reading HN I get the impression that there are lots and lots of folks earning huge salaries at very important companies. Lots of others have founded startups, raised $millions and in many cases have had massive windfall exits.
This is basically the worst part of any social networking service now. They highlight the breakout success stories, geniuses and outliers so much that it becomes easy to assume everyone else is doing much better than you are.
For average Joes it's seeing the influencers and celebrities on Instagram and TikTok, for developers it's Hacker News and Reddit.
I’ve said for many years now that my job is primary knowing what’s possible even if I don’t necessarily know exactly how to do it (today).
By reading HN nearly daily I keep my finger on the pulse of tech, or at least the parts of tech that most directly affect me. Countless times I’ve been able to say “oh, I saw a library/saas/etc that does what we need” in a meeting and it’s directly led to starting my own company. When a company came to me asking for software I was able to say “yes that’s possible and I’m capable of delivering it”, in great part due to following advancements/products/etc in tech even when I hadn’t used some of those specific tools before.
Personally I shine the brightest when I can pair my knowledge of technology with someone who is a subject matter expert (outside of tech) to create something they didn’t think was possible. I’ve often thought my dream job would be to go into non-tech companies, learn enough about their industry, examine their processes, and then suggest and/or implement solutions (revolving around the use of technology) to improve them.
I don’t know of any place, other than HN, that has high quality posts and discussions about technology and new things coming out.
No doubt the community is intelligent, but compassion, honesty, intellectual honesty and willingness to accept other peoples viewpoint (and they yours) are more important.
Many people come to HN, myself included to distract themselves from other things. They bring that frustration with them. If I were to make a forum, it would be structured much differently. The first to post sets the tone of the "discussion" if we call it that. It is often a hoard of frustrated people (mostly men) screaming at each other in rhetorical combat.
I really suggest people set their maxvisit and minaway settings. My minaway is 180 minutes. I am ratcheting down my maxvisit.
I think every community and platform has a limited growth-value for their users. At some point, you've seen it all, read it all, know all the shit and giggles going around the platform. And at this point, you shift into the doomscrolling-mode and start consuming stuff for the sake of consumption, and to find the one gem of the day which justifies the time wasted on the platform today.
FB was making me feel annoyed. Quitting it helped a lot. With HN it is a bit harder because some content here is actually useful. I find avoiding comments on submissions about layoffs, Google, Meta, Apple, lawsuits, etc. helps me be more positive.
Saying these sites are great resources for information, but not great places to express emotion.
I gave HN a break for a bit, didn't make any difference. It's like having an interactive newspaper of news I might be interested in when there's not much happening with my RSS reader.