I love you, HN, but you're toxic (2022)

Here's my theory on why we see internet toxicity --

A lot of people think they are offering "free information" on the internet, but what they are really doing is offering a transaction: "I'll tell you what I think but in a manner where I present myself as higher status than you." [There are the exceptions, particularly here on HN, where somebody is infinitely humble and patient of course, especially on certain topics]

You'll meet a lot of people outside the internet who are interested in doing this too "Let me overexplain X to you" (e.g. Mansplaining). Which conveys again two things -- "free" information, but actually on the condition of presenting oneself as "the teacher."

I think on the internet, where there are 0 barriers to entry, ANYBODY can post an offer, no matter who bad it is (let me peddle a stereotype as brilliance and see who bites).

Someday soon, if we want, we can have a version of HN where every single comment is rewritten by GPT4 to be friendly/positive/deferential but equally informative.

some while ago, I saw a comment where someone said, "why did you ask this when you can google it?", and the answer came back, "because sometimes i learn unexpected things and get another perspective even when i could search for it myself".

i find that this is the value of being here, not being right, wrong, but hearing another view. when it's civil, it's great. when there are dumb questions, we all learn something.

i was feeling bad the other day because someone i met said it was weirdly direct of me to compliment his sense of humour, i guess in this context it's better than being direct about someone's flaws.

You might well have fallen into this pattern anyway without hacker news. For you to want to change when still in your twenties could be seen as positive. Maybe without hacker news you adopted the pattern but then don’t change till you are in your 40s.

I was diagnosed very later in life as both adhd and autistic. When investigating what these things are I realised that the impulse control impact and attention to detail have lead to that behaviour earlier in life and likely affects a lot of people here. I try to temper that these days or at least to think about it more. Although, my reaction and patience to the horrors that politicians put us through are less tempered :-)

Understanding it can make it less be seen as toxicity but to understand where it comes from and take the good bits away.

> It doesn’t even matter if I’m right. Sometimes, you just have to be kind.

The article seems to imply that kindness/correctness are somehow mutually exclusive. Even if that wasn't the author's intent or belief, it certainly seems to be the way some commenters conduct themselves.

I like HN overall. I learned a lot from wonderful people who offered their knowledge. I also try to pay back to the community. However, my problem with some HN comments is deeper that as noted in the post.

The post and comments herein talk about being correct but at the same time being unkind. By this point in my career, I can still appreciate unkind comments that are still correct on technical grounds -- at least I learn something if I set aside my ego and be patient with the other party. However, the big problem I observe is that many comments are unkind and untruthful/incorrect. These comments have no positive value to the community.

I spent some time thinking why these comments exist. I agree with other comments herein that there is a sense of superiority coming from the commenters explaining their purportedly superior view. Unfortunately, this sense of superiority spills over to other fields that the commenters are not experts in; their wrong comments would still be unkind.

The tech bull market since the 90s created an entire generation (or two) of programmers making 6 or 7 figures with brand names who feel superior across other domains ("everything is software", "physicists are idiots to be replaced by ML") Nerds revenge came true, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, the software engineering has been highly influential in our world and so are the engineers therein. But life is more than software, and other people, including experts, exist, too. And it is this hubris that makes HN less wonderful than it can be.

apropos: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1831:_Here_to_Hel...

Discussion at the time (431 points, 455 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349222

I generally enjoy and like HN.

It seems, to me anyway, that we have the whole gamut of humanity here.

Im pretty much non-judgemetal when it comes to people and the negativity does not offend or impact upon my self esteem.

There are of course a lot of banal meaningless posts, which I persoanlly like, because I can apply some off hat humour and reply accordingly.

Like life, some things interest me some things do not.

I embrace difference.

Toxic? not at all.

I'm sorry

Seems to be more a reflection of the author's personality than hacker news being toxic.