Probably [this one](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19232407) and [this one](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230282), both of which do a fair job of capturing my feelings on the matter (as someone who abandoned the CW threads back in 2016 for many of the same reasons).
This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these
days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open
discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and
read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and
dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the
top.
In theory, this seems noble. Ideas that are out of the norm are given
a chance at light. It about previous beliefs that you may not have
considered before but which surprisingly have some merit to them. A
marketplace of ideas where the best and brightest succeed. A true
meritocracy fitting of rationalist love of numbers and sorting by the
highest number,
Considering that this is the internet, it becomes a wretched hive of
scum, villainy, and horrible ideas. People with legit bad ideas like “If
you need money, you should burn down your house for the insurance money
and rent an apartment.” exist. You have to swim through their ideas
because you have other people with similarly stupid ideas upvote bad
ideas. Meanwhile people who are less likely to be heard already don’t
want to engage with a dumpster fire of a community who seems okay with
reprehensible viewpoints.
Making a community self-responsible for policing makes it vulnerable
to brigading from trolls and people with reprehensible viewpoints. The
latter being more dangerous IMO, as there’s a potential to poison the
community as a whole.
honestly the sheer scope of the failure of internet forums to fulfill their stated purpose of creating this great and beautiful agora where the free market of ideas can be held and where the good ideas will rise like the creme de la creme and advance a shared understanding of the world is as complete of an indictment of idealism as anyone is liable to find, and it's constantly shocking to me that the marxist left and the materialist camp doesn't make more out of this
instead everybody sees these failures and thinks "surely if we had a special ruleset" or in the LW case "surely if we had all discussion through our own reddit knockoff' and it just makes me feel like I've been taking recreational chemotherapy
to be honest I hate HN users a lot more than SSC commenters, at least
the rationalists pretend at aspiring to some greater thing, the YC types
are just greedy little pigs who don’t give a damn about anything but
getting fuck-you money or internet recognition as a
startupreneurfluencer, there’s no rhetorical veil just the crushing
banality and the patronizing advice you’d get from a fifty year old
middle manager who thinks repeating lines from “The Mythical Man Month”
or whatever manifesto is popular now is a substitute for wisdom coming
out of the mouth of a twenty year old paul graham devotee.
I'm new here, but from what I've seen, it would fit perfectly. Are you familiar with n-gate.com? It is a weekly roundup that treats HN with exactly the respect it deserves.
People on HN aren't as openly racist, which is what seems to get the juices flowing for most people here. They're more firmly in the "iamverysmrt" category.
amazed to see there are comments there that aren’t dumb as hell
well, a few
In theory, this seems noble. Ideas that are out of the norm are given a chance at light. It about previous beliefs that you may not have considered before but which surprisingly have some merit to them. A marketplace of ideas where the best and brightest succeed. A true meritocracy fitting of rationalist love of numbers and sorting by the highest number,
Considering that this is the internet, it becomes a wretched hive of scum, villainy, and horrible ideas. People with legit bad ideas like “If you need money, you should burn down your house for the insurance money and rent an apartment.” exist. You have to swim through their ideas because you have other people with similarly stupid ideas upvote bad ideas. Meanwhile people who are less likely to be heard already don’t want to engage with a dumpster fire of a community who seems okay with reprehensible viewpoints.
Making a community self-responsible for policing makes it vulnerable to brigading from trolls and people with reprehensible viewpoints. The latter being more dangerous IMO, as there’s a potential to poison the community as a whole.
to be honest I hate HN users a lot more than SSC commenters, at least the rationalists pretend at aspiring to some greater thing, the YC types are just greedy little pigs who don’t give a damn about anything but getting fuck-you money or internet recognition as a startupreneurfluencer, there’s no rhetorical veil just the crushing banality and the patronizing advice you’d get from a fifty year old middle manager who thinks repeating lines from “The Mythical Man Month” or whatever manifesto is popular now is a substitute for wisdom coming out of the mouth of a twenty year old paul graham devotee.
ceterum censeo sand hill road delenda est.