Is HN becoming more an existential crisis echo chamber?

HN is not changing, but people are - the last couple years have been tough, and people are thinking more deeply about what they want from life, what they need, what boundaries they will set with work, family and friends, and in general just who they want to be and how they want to live their life.

So people are expressing themselves more strongly, and some of those expressions are questions more than answers. We're all coming to different conclusions at different times, and dialogue in general is getting more intense in the world.

So yes, HN may be amplifying your own feelings. And if so, and it bugs you, maybe lay off HN for a while. I doubt HN is the only place you will experience this, though. I'd recommend being mindful of how any community makes you feel, and make a conscious decision whether or not you want it to be part of your daily life.

I log into LinkedIn a few times a week. The posts are a parade of fakery and insincerity. Compared to that, HN has much better discourse, because the focus is on your ideas, not on you personally. There is no careerist agenda at work on HN. I have not gotten the impression that HN is an existential crisis echo chamber (it's an echo chamber in many ways for sure).

Maybe you are clicking on posts that are of the existential crisis echo chamber kind. Or perhaps wading into debates in the comment section that heighten that feeling.

You could see if desisting from commenting (or even reading comments except on purely technical topics) and reading non-technical stories helps improve your experience here. It's really what you make of it, not just what the site provides.

Humans are still human, even here on HN. I think dang has said stuff like "When it's pouring everywhere, it gets wet in here too." Or something along those lines.

HN suffers more these days from Eternal September than it used to because it's bigger than it used to be and I'm guessing it likely grew a lot during the pandemic because so many Reddits grew dramatically while everyone was working remotely and social isolating etc.

I'm guessing it will calm down again some at some point. It's certainly been bumpier than usual the last couple of years.

I try hard to avoid engaging with the stuff I don't want to see more of. Sometimes that's hard but it's in the guidelines and it's a best practice etc.

HN used to be a more balanced place, but the broader "techlash" of the last ~5 years has fully engulfed it. HN is a negative and cynical place today. Discussions about future developments are dominated by the bad things that are happening, will happen etc. In fact in many instances you will not even see positive articles about a particular topic.

Someone working on an exciting new electric aircraft? Discussion is about how they're a fraud. Tesla ships a million EVs a year? Discussion is about how terrible they are. Big tech releases new product? Complain about privacy. New kubernetes feature? Kubernetes is complicated crap.

If this is the dominant disposition of people here, is it any wonder it bleeds into their broader views? I've started spending more time in more balanced places like Twitter and Reddit. I still read HN, but with the understanding that I'll only see one side of the story here.

I see a lot of similar themes across Reddit, LinkedIn, and I assume other social media (I don't use those though). I think society is in existential crisis more than HN is in existential crisis. People are re-examining their relationship to work, capital, and community in the face of everything going on in the world.

Pay attention to your emotions when reading HN (or any social media app for that matter). If things you see regularly ignite a bad feeling or adverse reaction in you instead of interest or joy it is probably wise to lay off it for a while.

Some people spend more time researching javascript frameworks than the meaning of life.

A lot of HN posts seem to be people expressing anxiety about becoming successful or being disillusioned about being successful. I have thought a great deal on the topic of success. If your atheism or nihilism doesn't give you the answers that you need then I would consider looking elsewhere.

If you mean “existential” as in existentialism, then no. I don’t see many quotes from Dostoevsky, Sartre and the like, not even Herzog. This is marigolds and sunshine compared to the 1950s, when it was a fashion statement to be morose and despairing until it was globally discovered that angst was unsexy and boring.

If you mean midlife crisis sorts of things, then part of it is probably you and part age demographics, in that it is something that folks in their mid thirties tend to slide down into for a time. HN may be underrepresented in the enthusiastic youth and mellowed oldster demographics that provide more of a balanced perspective. There is certainly enough wisdom literature to read for the mellow perspective. Babysitting kids can cover the youth end.

The Whole Earth platform The WELL was (is?) pretty good at that better balance in days past.

Tech forums like HN tend to be more resonant cavity or optical resonator than echo chamber, and that is one of their unique value-adds…it can be sparkly in certain good ways. Tech forums aren’t really designed for echo chamber stuff, which makes the occasional attempts at astroturfing, influencing and the like that occasionally slip through the cracks risible and ineffective…another value-add.

Or maybe you just need more fiber in more diet.

Wait, you guys are getting too much money?

Do you mean very recently? Because the change of tone is normal around the holidays; it will go away.

I relish HN for its sanity and focus. Emotions and politics will inevitably creep in everywhere as we are human. (well, sometimes I'm accused of being a robot, but I promise my Vital Fluids are H20/carbon/iron based rather than Vulcanic or positronic...)

There is another site, that, um, starts with an A and rhymes with technica, that has gone completely the other way and used to be awesome and now is more politics than facts.

Very happy to start my day here.

The pandemic has changed a lot about life, doors that were previously shut are now open. People's previous lifestyles have gone away and in some cases are not coming back. Many doors have been opened through remote work that were previously closed. For both good and bad, social pressure has been removed for most activities as both a motivator and a detterent.

This leaves many open questions around what one is intrinsicly motivated to do.

It's been that way for a few years, in my opinion. HN was the only social network I would somewhat participate in, but I realized it's more the same. I just think it's more intellectualized, thus slower on the uptake that the canary died since we're all engrossed by the smell of our own farts.

Anxiety and existential issues really plague tech in general. Pretty sure most of us grew up on the propaganda, "technology will save the world". While it's true like 30% of the time, the other 70% is a dumpster fire with ticket sales and someone trying to make NFT sales from the tickets as well.

My biggest internal screaming moment came when a year or two ago someone showed an API to save trees. The HN community was oddly positive about it. So stupid me asked some questions.

"How?"

"Because it would."

"But how???"

"Youre just a bigoted boomer that would never understand."

I hate this planet.

Someone else explained how it was better than someone else's idea about creating a resource for people to learn about local trees, identify at risk tree species and how to grow their own/take care of them. My screaming continued.

And you get this with a lot of specialized fields like civil engineering and agriculture. Know python? You're an expert in all things apparently. Someone with 20+ years experience in a practical field is an idiot to someone with 2 years of python dev work and a year of failed Apple app store projects. Sadly, I'm not even exaggerating. My mild dyslexia makes python impossible for me, so I guess I'll never learn life's secrets. Maybe I am the idiot afterall. All I know now at 34, Henry David Thoreau was right. I just wont focus on beans as much. I think I'm going to make my own line of sheep cheese instead and give it out to friends. Then try doing weekend gatherings to drink, eat and be merry with them. Farmers, even though broke and exhausted, tend to be far happier with life in general.

HN is definitely not an echo chamber; we see here quite a variety of positions on many controversial issues, and the great thing about HN is that we often see really good and well supported arguments on multiple sides of an issue, because if you can't support your argument with some verifiable evidence, you'll get downvoted very fast.

HN does, however, have its own version of the Overton Window[0], meaning that some positions are outside of what is acceptable to argue and those get shut down fast as well. This is the case both on technical issues where it is probably driven by the range of acceptable opinions among the Silicon Valley elites, and on social issues where it overlaps quite a bit with the mainstream media's Overton window, but maybe has a somewhat more libertarian spin (again, because that's common among the Silicon Valley elites).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

I wonder about the churn in the user community. If the community doesn't regularly refresh by attrition and new-joiners, then it must be aging. If that were the case, you'd expect to see quarter-life crises, mid-life crises, etc., reflected in the posts at predictable points. The pace is accelerated, of course, because we're on internet time.

Has anyone else reached a point where online tracking (aka surveillance economy) has become debilitating, online, outside a forum such as HN?

Interacting online, searching, just clicking a link, has become....exhausting actually, because of the sense of being tracked. For an ad.

It is dehumanizing.

Honestly lobste.rs[0] is better now, for tech related posts.

However i appreciate HN a lot more for having a non restricted account creation method, whereas lobsters has a cult like method of adding members :(

These days I use HN more from its newsletters then its feed to filter out the non tech content.

I usually try to ignore the social/non-technical related posts as much as possible, but i guess a forum is only as good as what people want from it, and it seems people here want those things more these days ? Eitherway im good, I just explore more sites where I can get great content.

Also happy new year everyone !

[0](https://lobste.rs)

Look into the social science of marriage, parenting and middle management. It was bleak before the pandemic and odds are it's become worse.

2021 will have been the first full year many did WFH. As much as some like to praise it here it's bound to be taking a toll on others.

Many people are down in the dumps around the holidays and that's without the added stress of a pandemic.

I think it’s a general ennui in society for our privileged white collar engineer class.

Tech has reached that awesome level. You can afford most material enjoyments in life that are good bang for buck. Etc. There’s nothing left to do.

In a yes or no title the answer is always no

HN is a complete echo chamber that quickly bans viewpoints opposing the dominant techbro ideology which is hollow and induces existential crises upon the briefest reflection.

There is definitely a bunch of sophomoric green spam on here. For example: The sky is falling. Ice is melting therefore people will not have enough to drink. Nevermind that water vapor and percipitation increases with temperature. There is plastic in the ocean. Nevermind that it is mostly inert like sand. Etc.