Everyone who is downvoting this comment has incurable autism.
Everyone in this community is used to being the smartest person in the room, and it shows. No one ever assumes good faith on the part of other posters. No one ever actually tries to understand the other point of view. No one even understands what they themselves are saying. This is an echo chamber of the most egoistic people on the planet, and that's why I browse HN. It's like some kind of massive terrarium for the socially doomed.
Even your comment is offensive, with the passive aggressive "Let's not do X," as if we're part of some kind of collective, or I'm some kind of child that needs to be gently chided for my remark.
You don't know me. I don't know you. Where does this holier-than-thou attitude come from?
fwiw, the trick I've found for enjoying hn comments is to ignore the pedantic, argumentative ones, and find the nuggets of joy and wisdom. Not saying I always manage to do that either, but... that's the only time I enjoy reading the comments.
After pondering it for years, I believe there are deep reasons why people arrive at anthropomorphized images of the community like this. We generalize based on what makes the strongest impression on us, and unfortunately what we dislike tends to make stronger impressions than what we feel good or neutral about: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
The community that you think you're encountering is thus an afterimage of things you noticed and disliked because those burn more into the retina. (I don't mean 'you' personally; this is common.) It's your own creation, in the sense that the selection of inputs is determined by your own pre-existing opinions and feelings. This is how we end up feeling surrounded by demons in a place like this, when in reality it is just a large and diffuse population sample: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... People with different (let's call it) pre-existing conditions notice different things, make different generalizations, and construct different images.
The reason it gets so emotional is that our relationships with other people are the most intensely emotional part of our lives, and a large and diffuse set of social inputs provides all the data points one could possibly need to select from.
A lot of people experience HN painfully in this way. That's a pity, and I feel bad about it; I think the solution is for the community to get more accurate reflection about the dynamics that lead to these impressions. If enough people become aware of them, maybe the needle will shift some. I wrote about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. In that case the context was about people feeling surrounded by social/political enemies rather than by unpleasant/stuck-up people, but the underlying dynamic seems the same.
> Where does this holier-than-thou attitude come from?
I don't think it's just whomever "they" is...
Text is hard to see through sometimes, and language is often vague. It's not always obvious when something is a joke, and it's not always guaranteed that something said in jest will be received the same way, nor that it's actually funny. Also downvotes are given for a wide variety of reasons (same as upvotes) so downvotes don't even necessarily indicate that a joke was interpreted as unfunny- it might simply be detracting or not relevant. It's best to not take downvotes personally, because they're often not given for the reasons you assume. (BTW I see good jokes on HN getting upvotes all the time, so make sure to avoid jumping to conclusions based on incomplete information.)
> Even your comment is offensive, with the passive aggressive "Let's not do X," as if we're part of some kind of collective, or I'm some kind of child that needs to be gently chided for my remark.
Sorry to say so, but this is off the mark. Your comment is explicitly offensive toward people who are actually autistic. This is a sort of collective, it is a community of hackers, and gentle encouragement to keep things civil and in line with the guidelines is allowed and encouraged. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Humorless and unpleasant are subjective. Not everyone is going to like your humor. Doubly so if you’re going, not just for an insult, but an edgy insult. Personally I think your comment is a shitty joke that comes off as an offensive version of holier than thou for your enlightened sense of humor.
I think you’re longer response is an uncannily apt description of itself.
There are other places on the internet where intelligent, articulate people gather to exchange wisdom and the occasional burst of cleverness or humor is appreciated. For reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, HN isn't it.
But I think it's also a good and underappreciated point you make.
> Where does this holier-than-thou attitude come from?
Do you mean that literally?