100% this

I really don’t know where all these rose tinted glasses are coming from about early web communities.

As a teen trying to learn to code with no help at home and no money, going onto a technical forum you had to steel yourself to being ostracized for not already being an expert.

I mean people on hacker news in 2026 don’t appreciate how terribly toxic and not friendly at all this site itself was in 2012 when I joined.

I mean hacker news itself has had the reputation of being full of the most toxic technical people in the responses, and you know the dropbox response is exactly the precise reason this place has the reputation it does