Tell HN: HN has lost the joy for me
There was a time I would come to HN to get some respite from the depressing state of reality. Ukraine war or climate crisis would drive me to despair, and I'd try to get a little endorphin rush by dodging those same topics here and reading about neat things people build or cool new technologies or products.
The light has gone out lately. I can't blame AI for all of it. there are a lot of AI stories, sure - but something else has changed. Even the show hn section doesn't sparkle anymore. That seem to be all libraries for doing complex stuff. Like everyone is pivoting to deliver more complex work in the face of vibe coding.
Where's the fun stuff? Where's the joy?
30 comments
https://x.com/hackernews
We wanted to do things like this for ages but never had time. Justin at YC has been nailing it (I'm biased, of course) and a bunch of us have been enjoying nominating candidates for this treatment - a bit like HN's own second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), but through this different channel.
Anyone who wants to send a nomination, please do! hn@ycombinator.com is best.
Would you consider including a mastodon feed for this for those of us who don't habitually include the X formerly known as Twitter in our diet?
I don't understand mastoverse mechanics, so perhaps someone could suggest the most HN-friendly way to go about it?
Those real needs won't go away. Until addressed.
What are they? Find out add address them.
It's there, you just have to look harder.
Like this story about Vecos, which fits your definition of "fun stuff", was posted earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984984
There’s this post from a few weeks ago, if you just wanna filter out all the AI content
I know it's the nature of HN to be centered (nay, fixated) on the latest things, but I think I'm the wake of so much AI content, the people who would have otherwise done something else are doing AI things or posting elsewhere
As others have pointed out there are still fun things, but I feel like there are quantifiably fewer things that I enjoy on here, every week.
I used to love scrolling hn first thing in the morning and now I rarely do
despite everything, I think there are people out there who care a lot, and who are doing good work, and I'm hopeful that if we care enough we can sort of redirect this wave into something good for the world
HN is still one of my favorite sites, though. Even when I get downvoted, at least it's primarily by people who can understand the subject matter. Every other site has people absolutely talking out their ass, especially when it comes to... ugh... AI.
It tends to cycle, just like many relationships. The flush of novelty is exciting; it contrasts positively with what's available elsewhere. Then you notice the annoying things, then the dismaying ones. Eventually that too becomes background, which other positive-again things can stand out from. At some point you realize it has all been there all along, if in fluctuating proportions.
It's affected by macro trends (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and the swings going on in the world at large. It's affected by what's going on in a person's own life. Perhaps most of all, it's affected by the impact of the most recent things you happened to see that made an impression. There is a strong component of randomness in the latter.
People in an 'up' cycle with HN don't tend to make posts about it, so posts like this—through no fault of any one poster—are dominated by the 'down' cycle. There is a long tradition of these, going back about as far as HN itself. It produces a paradoxical "things have always been getting worse" sensation if you zoom back far enough.
Back then, from my memory, it was far more focused on solo entrepreneurs bootstrapping their own tech startups, blogs and tutorials on new/interesting tech, and some discussion around starting/running businesses.
Today HN is basically just a tech news site, focused largely on new AI announcements.
I don't really blame HN for this, but the thing I personally loved about this site is basically gone. The world has moved on though... I joined HN back when a dude in his bedroom with some tech and business skills could potentially build the next Facebook. This kind of thing doesn't really happen anymore.
I also think the commenters here have changed. It feels less tolerant than I remember it. I notice that downvotes are now commonly handed out to people who share differences of opinion. This was something HN was very intolerant of in the past.
I'm still here though. At the end of the day HN is still more interesting and less toxic than most communities online.
pg said that was okay early on so that's not a new thing but maybe there have been changes over time in how often that happens
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585931