Re; Underwhelming HN Comments

Joel Chrono recently published a good blog post titled Setting up phones is a nightmare that is certainly worth reading (it made me happy that I was able to find affordable older Google Pixels on Ebay for me and my Mom that support GrapheneOS and other Android alternatives). His post was shared to Hacker News. He was less-than-impressed with the quality of the commentary:

It got a lot of very funny replies, so much so I kind of want to do a continuation. But honestly it’s pretty simple, so many people saying things without reading in full, without any sort of respect and acting like know-it-alls. Don’t worry, I laughed so hard at all of them and don’t really feel letdown at all.

Joel Chrono

Since launching The New Leaf Journal back in in April 2020, three of my articles received what I would consider to be a significant number of Hacker News comments: RSS as a Facebook Alternative (231 HN comments), Review of /e/ – An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones (134 HN comments), and Cycling Doping Fallacies (104 HN comments). My impression of the comments was similar to Joel Chrono’s regarding his post. There were more hot takes than reading and many self-appointed pedants (there were a few decent comments, but more of the “why bother commenting if you are not interested in reading” or “but I wrote about what I wanted to write about…” variety). I contributed one comment to Cycling Doping Fallacies, but not the first two (I was actually flying to Texas when the /e/ OS post made page one, so I learned about it after the fact). I published an article-response to a few comments on my /e/ OS review because they inspired an interesting topic idea (wrong as they were). “I laughed so hard at all of them and don’t really feel letdown at all” is the best response.

Of course, I missed the Hacker News hubbub for Joel Chrono’s phone post because I no longer follow HN. Having enjoyed his post before knowing about the HN incident, I will forego the comments. I previously followed an HN page one feed in my feed reader, but the submissions have deteriorated in quality such that the feed was flooding my feed reader with slop (even with filters!). I tried to make a search term feed with keywords for interesting topics, but that too sloppified my pristine Miniflux instance. But while I am no longer following Hacker News, I do like seeing my Koko Analytics states go to the Moon now and then, so feel free to make me famous.