Or, youre confusing primordial desire to be aligned with perceived peers -- checking what others say, then effortlessly nodding along -- with forming your own judgment.
But I never expected that this would also link back to my tendency to skip an article and just stick to what the top comments of a section have, HN or Reddit.
Because when you were still swinging from the trees a some generations back that was a survival trait.
I often click on the HN comments before reading the article because the article I very often nothing more than the headline and I'm more interested in the discussion.
At the same time, I have no issue disagreeing with whatever is the popular stance, there’s almost some catharsis in just speaking the truth along the lines of “What you say might be true in your circumstances and culture, but software isn’t built like that here.”
Regardless, I’d say that there’s nothing wrong with finding likeminded peers either, for example if everyone around you views something like SOLID and DRY as dogma and you think there must be a better, more nuanced way.
Either that, or everyone likes a good tl;dr summary.