It's cute, and provides a hint of human connection that is otherwise absent on the web "hey, another human is reading this too!" which you probably know but something about seeing the pointer move makes it feel real.
Probably not the greatest during a hacker news hug of death, but if I read that article some other time and saw one of the moving pointers, I would think it was really cool.
Have you ever read with other people, like in school or a book club, or been somewhere that there were other people around? It's an interesting move by the author; the loneliness epidemic hasn't gone unnoticed.
Probably not the greatest during a hacker news hug of death, but if I read that article some other time and saw one of the moving pointers, I would think it was really cool.