Ask HN: How do you build a technical audience online in 2026?

I feel like the tech community has fragmented and it's really difficult to build any kind of audience online these days. The things that used to work:

- Posting useful tips and advice

- Building cool stuff and showing it to people

- Making interesting tools and open sourcing them

- Engaging with people on HN, Reddit, Twitter, or even LinkedIn

- Writing blog posts

But now that stuff just gets lost in the noise. There are hundreds of thousands of other people doing similar things, and the platforms themselves seem to focus the collective attention on a few small outliers, and those outliers seem to have got where they are by a mixture of talent, luck and by debasing themselves just to garner attention.

The internet is both busier and deader than ever before.

It doesn't feel repeatable or scalable, so what does work in 2026?

(P.S. I also expect that this post will also get lost in the noise!)