[koyote]

The "I BOUGHT A THING!" posts reek of astroturfing in my opinion; just browse /tea or /breadit and you'll see the same item posted every single week reach the top page.

I do wonder how many of them are actually sponsored/artificially promoted by the company's PR department vs just natural hive-mind. In the end it doesn't matter because the posts are of zero value...

[puzzlingcaptcha]

To be honest, it is everywhere. For example, I subscribe r/succulents and it's largely the same thing (and I doubt anyone astroturfs particular plant species).

I think the main reasons are that it gives people with nothing insightful to contribute something they can share and can elicit some emotional response which is easier for a picture than text. A picture is also faster to consume and process which likely explains the popularity of image macros and memes. Another problem is that the majority of posts in such subreddits are usually the same few questions, so typically a sticky post or a wiki page will be made to refer people there (or asking for help will be specifically banned) and suddenly there is not much to talk about.

The most egregious example for me is r/selfhosted which started as a tech DIY subreddit and transformed into people posting pictures of all the docker containers they are running at home.

edit: In fact, I would go as far as to suggest that the primary reason HN is slow to succumb to the Eternal September is because it doesn't allow for embedding media.

[koyote]

> In fact, I would go as far as to suggest that the primary reason HN is slow to succumb to the Eternal September is because it doesn't allow for embedding media.

I agree, I think your whole post basically highlights how social media has converged into Instagram behaviour: quick scroll and spend 2 seconds on a post (image because text takes more than 2 seconds to process) and then double-tap for a like (a like being a mere reflex to the 2 seconds of mental stimulation you just felt).

That being said, even HN has its own issues: the same discussions get rehashed ad infinitum for many popular topics (just compare two posts about p.e. Apple, 1 year apart). Maybe we can have a school essay-type plagiarism checker that declines any comments with a high enough similarity to existing comments? :) (please don't do that!)