Why are there an increasing number of outright unhinged high karma users on HN?
And some of these leave comments so bizarre, that I can’t find any charitable explanation.
Other than perhaps they may be skipping reading every other word or something… and then respond to an imaginary version of the parent.
Uncharitably, they could be semi-random keyboard bashing, deranged bashing, emotional tantrums, and so on. Or LLM written… except the style doesnt match.
Of course this has always been somewhat prevalent for low karma users, but it’s now creeping up higher and higher.
For example, I had a recent bizarre encounter.
I had double checked the first 10 pages of google results, in regards to a claim that I implied prior in the comment chain, mentioning that it seemed supportive of the claim.
Maybe the novelty of someone doing that, and not just randomly opining, triggered something.
Realistically, it didn’t take more than 5 minutes of effort, but still… it would have been 1 to 5 minutes of genuine effort.
A bit later, a bizarre reply came making the accusation that I had put in “no effort”, and so on.
Which might have made sense in a high effort reply… except it was a hastily written short reply… that obviously took under a minute of genuine effort.
Accusing me of “no effort”, asking me to put in more effort than them, and then themselves putting in “no effort”… created a frankly nonsensical reply.
After pointing it out, that if they spent “no effort” too, I would have already put in more, or equal, effort by definition… there was no response from anyone.
Of course my comments were flagged and theirs was upvoted…
Has anyone else encountered similar or thought about this issue spreading upwards?