[def_ConGame]

Bahhahaha! I'm so glad someone posted this! I had been trying to find my way back to this link ever since the first time I saw it!

This was part of one of the first threads I had ever read on HN, on or around the day it appeared: 3/23/2013. Actually, I think I discovered HN in late April or early May, but anyway, the user that shared it then, as much as now, also quickly got flagged and hellbanned.

For a brief moment I felt like I was reading a site that had some truths to speak to, but that illusion was dispelled as soon as it was [censored] and the flames were stamped out. Ah well...

Five years later, and I know better. This site is a tightly controlled mouthpiece, and an echochamber in service to microcorporations in search of early retirement paydays and acquisition cashouts, but hey, work-safe reading material, am I right?

[matkins]

It's a shame it was flagged, but that's the way of this site. Everybody pretends to be a goody two-shoes. For those who can't see it, go to your profiles and switch "showdead" to on.

[def_ConGame]

To HN's credit, though, the Juicero-riffic aspects of SV are understood for what they are: the greasy, obsequious total fucking bullshit that produces nothing, or worse, wastes everyone's time, aching beneath a cloud of impostor syndrome that isn't entirely incorrect. Either that or peacocking the pick-up artistry of engraved, wooden iPhone cases, and popped collar headshots in douchey Vanity Fair biopics.

YC has its own stinky investments that one can rationalize as "teaching experiences" and "lessons learned" and maybe that's a cop out for not being diligent enough, but press too hard and the subculture gets stifled by the Steve Ballmers with a Trump-like attitude. Stack ranking kills the crab, and you get Windows Vista and "Scroogled" ad campaigns at the other end of the pole. A company of paranoid drone wonks, who wear the soulless dork uniform and drive the speed limit, to get to the morning traffic jam on time.

So leaving room for the dumber shit, the flights of fancy, gets you more of the most interesting things that can be had (the dropboxes, the reddits, the dockers, the gitlabs). For all the effort to produce one solid, tangible, self-sustaining utility though, there's definitely 9 or 99 like the link you posted, which, five years later, results in the thread we now read.

Had path.com been destroyed in that moment, instead of wasting another fruitless five years, would the world be a better place? Eh, there's plenty of insufferable nonsense going around. I'm probably as insufferable, when push comes to shove.

Should HN crush all the criticism thereof. Well, at least HN isn't a place where enemies are made, so there's that.