This is one of the ironies of HN to me. It can feel like “you’re keeping up with trends” by following HN regularly.
And then you experience this (either firsthand or secondhand) and realize just how completely randomly arbitrary it is if your submission floats to the “top 30” or not.
Which doesn’t mean it’s not still worthwhile reading (I still follow regularly), it’s just that it’s more like a daily fortune cookie than it is any sort of “curated by popular consensus.”