Perceptions of HN bias tend to be in the eye of the beholder. They're mostly an inverse image of what you like: if you like X, HN will seem anti-X; if you dislike it, HN will seem pro-X. In reality, HN is a large dataset that contains all of these things. But we have a cognitive bias to notice more of, and more intensely, what rubs us the wrong way. Pain cuts deeper grooves than pleasure.

After a few cases, the unpleasant memory hops to the dataset as a whole, leading to a fixed view of HN. But people with opposite likes have the opposite fixed view. When people tell how they see HN, they're really telling the story of themselves. It's fascinating how solid this principle turns out to be. I'm sure it extends to things that are far less trivial than an internet forum.