You're still looking at this only from the point of view of one thread you happen to care about. I understand that! But HN has hosted truckloads of extremely active threads about all of this. Many have spent loads of time on the front page. In fact this topic set is one of the most highly represented on HN. So the situation is the opposite of how it seems to you and not ironic at all; the irony is that it seems that way.