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Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

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Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#1
Most of the times I read something with "Show HN", I see lots of hate and negative energy in the comments. These people are hungry for appreciation as they spent months building their product/tool/startup. Why don't we give them a helpful criticism while support them?

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#2
The negativity became dominant post-PG. Unfortunately and disappointingly.

[added] To elaborate: his regular essays were thought-provoking and challenging, in a way that generally drove HN commenters to think and contribute. Nowadays there is a discouraging excess of emoting and belittling, even though the moderators have stepped up their nudges and interventions.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#5
post #2

The negativity became dominant post-PG. Unfortunately and disappointingly. [added] To elaborate: his regular essays were thought-provoking and challenging, in a way that generally drove HN commenters to think and contribute. Nowadays there is a discouraging excess of emoting and belittling, even though the moderators have stepped up their nudges and interventions.

That isn't true, the most famous example of HN negativity is Show HN: Dropbox which has been reposted quite a few times on HN since dropbox became dropbox.

Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#7
Hitting the "show" link in the top nav and reading by date, the thing that struck me the most was not the "negative energy" but the lack of comments. A lot of people showing but apparently not so many paying attention. Some seem pretty nifty...

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#8
post #5
post #2

The negativity became dominant post-PG. Unfortunately and disappointingly. [added] To elaborate: his regular essays were thought-provoking and challenging, in a way that generally drove HN commenters to think and contribute. Nowadays there is a discouraging excess of emoting and belittling, even though the moderators have stepped up their nudges and interventions.

That isn't true, the most famous example of HN negativity is Show HN: Dropbox which has been reposted quite a few times on HN since dropbox became dropbox. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306

First, one swallow does not a summer make...

Second, I notice you joined in July 2013. Sam Altman took over in February 2014, and PG's retirement had started earlier, so I wonder how much you experienced of HN before post-PG.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Hacker News community is always hating on new ideas?

#10
I don’t read Show HN much, but I wonder how much of that hate and negativity is just plain objective criticism that it merely perceived negatively by some. On the internet, if you don’t use smileys or polite language, you sometimes seem negative even if you just make normal observations or ask logical questions. That’s just how anonymous online communication is, unfortunately.
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