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HN has a bizarre nasty streak when it comes to seasteading. These disparate groups of people are trying to hack together a nation from scratch yet all you'll mostly find here is hate and derision for these dreamers.

My theory is there's something very primal in people's brains when others try to leave the tribe, they'll find any reason to castigate it, no matter how irrational.

there's a discord linked on their site: https://discord.com/invite/bwHJm7QNnK

Honest answer: In the past. A lot of snark is because the people being snarky already had long discussions in the past. Looking up old topics is probably a good place to read the comments/discussion.

That doesn't help you participate however.

Sadly this used to be a fairly good place for mostly-snark-free discussions, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. At least for some topics of discussion.

As well as more obvious motivations, it seems often used to preemptively strengthen the perception of an argument. There's obviously demand for wildly partisan positions on just about any subject online; Going straight to derision gets people otherwise disinterested in the topic "on your side".