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by dageshi 2417 days ago
Lot's of low effort contrarianism in just about every thread is what's happening.

Genuinely, I think HN is now worse than reddit, only reddit has some actual funny/entertaining comments while HN is just... I don't know low effort tedium pretending to be insight?

Maybe HN got too popular?

5 comments

Are you serious?? There's no way HN is worse than reddit...the front page of reddit for me has about 1/3 twitter posts, 1/3 memes, and 1/3 teenage-culture references. This is not funny or entertaining...there are maybe 5-10% of posts MAX that I find enjoyable...only if I head to r/aww will I find genuinely worthwhile content.
My friends introduced me to a new term for this site... the orange site.

It’s hard to say if it’s people espousing heartfelt views, trolls, bots, or who knows what other internet monster?

> Lot's of low effort contrarianism in just about every thread is what's happening.

Not to mention mind reading.

Contrarianism is when you're well informed about both viewpoints and slightly leaning towards the less popular one.

Flatly denying the other side's points isn't contrarianism - at best it's trolling and at worst - willful ignorance.

Honestly, it is really, really bad.

The worst comments are of the "just asking questions!" type. The asker will preface it with an apology about them being "genuinely curious", and then continue by stating their "concerns" about how the established and agreed upon consensus was reached, and say they "couldn't help but notice" how the "other side" gets "suppressed/censored".

This type of concern-trolling is straight out of grassroots propaganda rulebook (which the asker is either consciously following, or has been a target and victim of themselves), and it's quite depressing how many posters here fall for it and engage the asker in good faith.

> "just asking questions!"

I recently learned that some people call these comments and posts "JAQing off"; such a term isn't going to change anyone's mind, but at least there's something to sadly smirk about when I see the same bad-faith questions posted for the umpteenth time.