Ask HN: Why so much snark? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why so much snark?

6 pointsuvaursi7 comments

Both headlines and comment sections are chockfull of snark and not really insightful comments. Can someone in earnest tell me what this site is for if this is the standard? There are guidelines but they aren’t being followed. Thank you.

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Snark isn't mutually exclusive from insightful commentary. All of Silicon Valley has to grapple with incredibly frustrating and oftentimes nonsensical demands from every direction. If you're not ironically entertaining ideas like DogTV or XServe, you will lose money hand-over-fist and be taken for a fool. It's part of the startup culture.

I'd argue that we see this because the American startup scene is obsessed with moonshots instead of sustainable or smart investments. Much of the motivation for starting a business today comes from the potential to artificially manufacture shock-and-awe, which many technically-inclined users will identify and critique. Personally I find this highly insightful, and suspect that it greatly raises the quality of startups even if the snark damages their valuation.

Snark is an immune response for shenanigans, and there have been more shenanigans than usual lately from all fronts.

Many come here to feed their pride addiction. Snark and arguing gives one a hit of pride when they're upvoted or praised, which feels good. Even when downvoted, people play a story in their head about being right. Acting out praising themselves through commenting.

We're all guilty of this to some extent. And for many it's an addiction.

One way to mitigate that effect for some may be disabling karma view in uBlock -> My Filters

    # HN Block Karma View
    news.ycombinator.com##.comhead .score:style(overflow: hidden; display: inline-block; line-height: 0.1em; width: 0; margin-left: -1.9em;)
    news.ycombinator.com###hnmain > tbody > tr:first-of-type table td:last-of-type .pagetop:style(font-size: 0!important; color: transparent!important;)
    news.ycombinator.com###hnmain > tbody > tr:first-of-type table td:last-of-type .pagetop > *:style(font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.45em;)
    news.ycombinator.com###logout::before:style(content: "|"; padding: 0.25em;)
    news.ycombinator.com##form.profileform tbody tr:nth-child(3)

There is just so much garbage in the media and marketing.

The people who say they used Claude Code to write a 1,000,000 line of code application in assembly language that worked the first time. Or how Microsoft wants you to buy a Copilot+ PC in the backdrop of them and Qualcomm failing to transition to ARM over and over again. Or the Harris campaign insisting, like Democrats have since 1992 or so, that they are going to win this one and all the next ones because Latinos are an increasing fraction of the population. Or the way Sabine Hossenfelder talked to ChatGPT and Eric Weinstein and went insane.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

But it is x10,000 and accelerating all the time thanks to turbo-capitalism, A.I. slop and the people blogging about how they vibe coded an A.I. slop cannon that almost works.

It's always been this way on HN. It's the reason the HN community has such a poor reputation outside this orange site, for being smug and condescending.

I feel like we need examples of say, the worst 5 headline examples on the front page. And 5+ examples in the comments.

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