The people here are intelligent and have widely varied experience. They discuss topics that are of interest to me, with minimal BS. That's it. That's the benefit
It's also the reason why founders have an enormous working drive, most of them fail, while VCs of course are the ones laughing their way to the bank.
This creates an "elitist" atmosphere (totally subjective assertion) that I'm not comfortable with.
Your comment is the perfect example of that.
But I also think that not every place on the internet is for everyone. I for one feel that the Twitter atmosphere is not comfortable, but I can imagine how other people do think so. So I try to stay away from Twitter.
Not all places invite all groups of people on the planet. I like to discuss with different-minded people, people who think different from me, so I like to talk with people against sexualisation, against drugs, people who are generally more conservative than me, to understand their perspectives. But it's really hard to do that on Twitter, as those people don't feel comfortable there, and that's fine to me. I'll find them where they are comfortable, and then I either adjust myself to the community I'm joining, or I find a different place.
Different and divergent communities on the internet is a good thing, it gives us multiple different ideas at the same time.
Twitter is not really a place for debate (more for rants IMHO), but HN is. And not every one wants to debate and that's cool.
What I enjoy the most on HN is the often insightful content (based on years of experience), but many threads bring "hype wars" or some kind of tech-related drama, what I remember the most is:
- C/C++ is evil, every one should do Rust
- Kubernetes is evil because it's complex
- Your business is failing if it's not generating 100k MRR
NB: I exaggerated intentionally to make my point, I know there is more nuanced opinions, and some real/justified concerns about those topics.
IMHO, While HN is a "social place" (there are people who can talk), this is not a "social network" (I will probably never remember your nickname even if we talk again together in another thread).