Hacker News Reader

Comment by gspr | Hacker News Reader

It's a wonderful place. It feels like HN, but with the Silicon Valley attitude dialed way way way down, and with a much narrower scope (politics, economics and entrepreneurship are all off-topic, for example).

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The SV attitude isn't there but there's active assholes who wield their moderation weirdly. I deactivated my account before deactivations were added to the logs and I don't remember what made me quit. I've largely avoided Lobsters since.

I joined their IRC channel last week and it's been rather chill.

I do like the invite-only nature of the site though, keeps quality high...while making some folks tyrannical.

Every such "club" inevitably attracts a specific sort that badly want to join just for the sense of exclusivity and a chance to virtue-signal their member status. It's same thing with some hard-to-get-into torrent trackers — once in, people become poster-children for Stockholm syndrome and the mods really get off on their perceived power. It's also the same with expensive new sport car models that manufacturers sell to collectors.

My intuition says it's to do with Status Signaling theory .

Slight clarification: politics that disagree with the zeitgeist of the site and the mods is off-topic.

Huh. I’ve largely avoided it, but that does sound pretty nice.

Hi. Could you send me an invite? Email in my profile :)

Nevermind, I got it. Thank you.

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