But those don't come with complimentary dopamine upon success.

I should have said "one of". I know of other sites. I already have HN up in a tab. Hitting refresh to see response time is a first check before going to others.

That's a plus for me. I'm nostalgic as hell for the era of the internet where the barrier to entry meant your peers needed half a clue to be there.

If the collapse of sites like reddit and twitter are what is needed for a return to smaller user-operated and user-owned sites to flourish, then so be it. I won't miss the memes.

> It's so user-unfriendly and confusing

This viewpoint is confusing to me. Conceptually, it's no different than email, and we all get by just fine on it

Huh? I clicked on both of them and if I wasn't paying attention I'd have thought I was on reddit. What's the problem? Or are you saying starting your own shard or node or whatever it's called is confusing compared with creating an account on reddit? Because if so they're totally different levels of thing.