There's a practice of selling older and higher karma accounts on Reddit, that are then used for marketing or propaganda, since they can pass new account filters that many subs have. I wonder if that is the case for HN as well - because it does seem really strange when someone who spent years talking about docker, go, and react suddenly starts posting about "NATO expanded eastwards" or somesuch.

I don't know if that would be more less sad than the prosaic explanation of people just being evil and dumb.