[smolder]

Reading the article is pure folly! They'll steal your IP address, inject silly JavaScript into your hypertext markup interpreter, render their text in unpleasing typefaces and suboptimal contrast, hold you ransom with cookie popups or paywalls... One must protect oneself. The only way to safely interact with the world wide web (called "web" because it's a trap like a spider web!) is to gleen what you can 2nd hand, from the hackernews comments.

[implements]

You’re being downvoted, but that’s exactly how I use HNs - if the comments are interesting enough then it’s probably worth clicking the link.

[smolder]

Joking around tends to earn downvotes, and that's okay --preferable, even. Your approach is quite common, I think. I very often look at comments first, too, depending on the topic & source. The only time skipping the article is any kind of issue is when people start engaging in the comments without proper context.