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Comment by zw123456 | Hacker News Reader

One of my favorite things about HN, is how, every once in a while, some obscure cool thing I have not hear about before gets pointed out, which, I find cool. But then, we "hug it to death" in the HN vernacular. Which is also really cool. Some neglected corner of the web that someone cared about, suddenly, a bunch of us nerds jump on it and recognize the nerd-coolness of it. I love that. Hope this was OK to say and not too off topic. I just love that.

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I remember first experiencing that in the early days of slashdot (must have been late 90s). It subjectively feels like such moments were more common back then.

It was a much smaller internet. Crowds and server overload were much more visible.

It’s actually not the “hug of death” that I fondly remember happening more often (although that too was undoubtedly more common) but finding cool, weird, niche topics on the internet that I didn’t know before and were really fascinating.

For me, it was (and to some degree still is) finding out the things I thought were amazing… other people did too. I was very alone and kind of helpless when I read The Last Question (and The Last Answer) and lots of other things, and seeing other people appreciate these things and not just appreciate them, but appreciate them they way I appreciated them really makes me feel much more connected than I was when I was younger.

When you were young, more things were novel.

Probably at least partially just that! As I said it was my subjective perception.

A bit like HN reading Money Stuff then paraphrasing its conclusions to each-other

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