I’m not here to engage in “normie politics”. Downvotes are for uninteresting comments. The disengagement is deliberate. The culture here is a feature, not a bug.
Who is the "culture here" deciding what is a feature or bug? Downvoting for disagreement and disengagement are against the Hacker News guidelines[0] and these are enforced with moderation. (See this post being nuked from hacker news.) People come here for Hacker News with moderation and good faith discussion, if they wanted unmoderated user content, 4chan would be fine.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html