Also, mods can help. They are friendly and generous. Reach out to them via email and ask them about your post. Often they have something to say and it's useful.
The challenge you encountered is nothing to do with the recent spike. I've been doing Show HN for 10 years. It's always been this way. It's never "easy" to get the attention of the community. But there are some things that can help, such as the time you post.
Check out these heatmaps of the average/mean post score versus hour/day of post and you can see the trends: https://hackerbook.dosaygo.com/?view=archive