[jama211]

Great idea, though something I accepted about myself years ago is I always want to read at least some of the comments, even if they’re horrific and make me want to sand off my own eyeballs. It may be horrible a lot of the time, but the total boredom and loneliness of experiencing the internet without feeling the presence of others is somehow worse.

I know it’s ridiculous, just seems to be the way I am.

[Defletter]

Heh, this reminds me of that study that showed people would rather give themselves painful electric shocks than be alone.

https://www.science.org/content/article/people-would-rather-...

[altmanaltman]

I mean yeah but that's not what the study says though... full link here: https://dtg.sites.fas.harvard.edu/WILSON%20ET%20AL%202014.pd...

Participants did not choose to give themselves electric shocks continuously. The average was around once during the entire 15-min window. It also showed a stark difference in gender: only 25% of women participants did it while 67% of men did it. All of them did not enjoy it (but that's obvious). 1 man shocked himself more than 190 times during the 15-min period, so the average data is much higher because of him.

So overall, it is correct that the human mind will seek stimulus (even negative ones) if they're bored/have nothing to do but nothing suggests they will give themselves continous painful "electric shocks than be alone".

Additionally, they were alone, but they also had no cellphones, no computers, nothing to engage their brains with other than the possibility to give themselves a small 4 volt shock. And most of them did it once and not again. I think it speaks more to human curiosity than the idea that you'll prefer pain to social isolation.

[jama211]

Yeah I’d be in that group, boredom sucks, I’d heaps want to feel what the shock feels like also out of curiosity too.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

HN comments are insightful. And while there is bot farms out there it’s important to know talking points of someone you disagree with to both consider their validity and to enable you to refute them well.

[perching_aix]

Some would disagree, but I'm squarely of the opinion that comments being inciteful and insightful are not mutually exclusive properties. This is only compounded when you're the kind of person who goes out of their way to try find meaning in what people say (and since that's subjective, you can basically find a perspective in anything if you try hard enough).

I find this to be kind of the whole reason why acting inciteful is socially problematic anyways: it derails conversations. It's also why I can consider it malicious: you can lay into this effect parasitically, with intention. You point to HN; I find that this idea is reflected in the HN guidelines as well (or at least the lessons from it are), but also that it's by no means immune.

[tracker1]

I'm kind of there with you... I will even actively avoid sites that don't have some kind of comments. Though I do wish more of them would load on demand, or even shift to another page for comments vs. loading a lot of JS or remote garbage first.

[RankingMember]

I had to break myself of that habit, because I too had that compulsion. I paid for it almost every time, though I admit the rare times it wasn't a total shitshow felt like winning the lottery.