I live 9 400 kilometers from the Bay Area and I can assure you that it's definitely a thing here, in my room.

HN is a way to procrastinate. So it leads to conversations about procrastination.

It's like if a bar were full of people having a conversation about how they need to quit drinking.

Or to put it more sympathetically, in the language of the article, it's because there's some need that isn't being met. Given that HN provides something like socialization, I'd bet it's that.