[xg15]

Addictive yes, but I also realized another dynamic on that site, or at least for the first time, fully caught the weirdness of it:

In old-style forums, BBSes and chats, there was at least a premise that you were talking to specific other persons: Yes, you started a new thread by shouting into the void, but if you got replies, the "from who" was sometimes just as interesting as the "what". If you stuck around long enough, you could recognize regulars and understand the structure of the community - maybe even get to know some people.

This kind of social network still exists, but has been joined by a different kind, where you still can hold conversations - but it's been completely deemphasized with whom your holding that conversation. Instead, the platform provides technical helpers such as tree or DAG views and up/downvotes to let you follow the structure of the discussion and get feedback without needing to track who you are talking to.

HN and Reddit do this, with *chan sites having driven it to an extreme where usernames have become completely optional.

It's basically online discussion completely abstracted to "content".

It still feels surprisingly rewarding (otherwise I wouldn't do it) but is also weird if you think about it.