This is a pretty apt analogy: why settle for the original article when you can read the outrage infused summary of an opinionated troll in a hurry?
It has little to do with overdesign or load times.
It has little to do with overdesign or load times.
What do HN comments and AI Overviews have in common?
- All information went through a bunch of neurons at least once
- We don't know which information was even considered
- Might be completely false but presented with utmost confidence
- ...?
More generally speaking though, I do agree that comments probably tend to give people more of a dopamine hit than the content itself, especially if it’s long-form. However comments on HN often are quite substantial and of high quality, at least relatively speaking, and the earlier point about reading the articles often being a poor experience has a lot of merit as well. Why can’t it be a combination of all of the above (to various degrees depending on the individual, etc)?
From reading one or a few short comments I at least know what the linked article is about, which the original headline often does not reveal (no fault of those authors, their blogs are often specialized and anyone finding the article there has much more context compared to finding the same headline here on a general aggregation site).
If something is overwhelmingly long, especially considering the subject matter, I just skip to the comments or throw it in an LLM to summarize.