Yes, the board used to be full of optimistic aspiring founders and actual founders, but it's now full of laborers who are riding out the end of the business cycle. Bitterness and anger is much more commonplace (I don't deny I share some guilt in this). I don't know if it's just a reflection of new users (eww redditors!) or macroeconomic forces + COVID.

Without wishing to be a Reddit archetype (whatever that is)I might (smugly?) point out that if we’re on a ship that needs turning around we’re at least unlikely to go down hill…

It maybe just a backlash. This place has become full of far left - which is surprising because it is (was) about startups, and startups are a far right thing by definition - do it yourself, government is a stupid monster that just gets in your way, do what people want, scale, get rich, increase inequality - it's strange to do startups or at least aspire to, and be a leftist. If only for utterly cynical reasons ("give the poor/stupid more free stuff so we can make our profits from people who are more gullible, not smarter upper middle class where money is now").

Naturally, it creates a backlash.