It is to me. I've got ~9 HN accounts over 1k and I cycle to a new one every so often because that is how little I care about the features that karma-gated.
If you take HN seriously enough to care, ummm, why?
No offense but this place largely acts like a more technically sophisticated Reddit with everything from downvoting factual statements to upvoting provably false opinion. That doesn't include the inherent bias in the design towards YC companies and so forth.