The Magnasanti that we call "Tech" is a little swimming pool that we first leapt into as kids, trying to splash the befuddled saps standing outside the pool. As we splashed and dunked and sprayed each other, a thrilling, unceasing mania began to build within us, and so we splashed all the harder, forcing enormous waves that slapped against the world, shocking it into noticing us. As more jumped in (or were pushed) we demanded and they forced upon us more and more and more water, until we no longer had to entice or push, the waves swept through the whole world, eating at the foundations of entire societies, once solid land crumbling into ravenous waters and spilling their hapless citizens into the vortex, spinning them head over heels, forcing them to cling to the shattered debris of their lives, and try to just-stay-above-water frantically with the rest of us, the billions and billions bobbing in the froth.
And how goddamn nice is it.... that in that raging omniflux, maybe not quite at the center, but maybe also not far from it, is a little sheltered swim up bar, its orange sign still cheerily showing the Y of Y Combinator, which used to BE one of the first kids, one of the ones that pushed and pulled and flooded and floated. They still do, of course.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this little bar, is that in all this swirling, foaming, madness, it is an oasis of stability. Absolute stability: This is from the first snapshot on Feb 21st 2007: https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb.... Look familiar? See pg's post getting knocked off the top already? Shelley might have approved.
Sometimes you get to chat with the people forcing the great devouring waves that reshape the earth, sometimes you just chat about what's new in JS tooling. If you are particularly lucky that day, you will find yourself enraptured by some hacker with the mad gleam of triumph in their eye, recounting in excruciating detail their monomaniacal pursuit of some utterly pointless pet project, and you will not consider one second of it wasted. Not even on your deathbed. Not even when compared to spending more time with your beloved.
I think it would be difficult to find an example of a community that has been stewarded as well, for as long, as hacker news, and while you do get commenters of all ages, interests, walks of life, politeness levels, and hyper-fixations upon irrelevant minutia, I've often found that for the most part you are all a lovely bunch of humans and/or AI bots.
Lest you accuse me of labiogluteal angling (a classic!), I am too old and too wet and too cold and too tired to want or need anything from anyone here, beyond a pleasant place to read.
But... I thought that just once over these decades, I'd tell you this how very grateful I am to be able to swim up to this bar, sit on the familiar stools, take a moment of respite from the tempest, and read what any of you might have to share, even -- or perhaps if I am being honest, especially -- when I think I think its absolute bollocks.
Thank you all, and may Tech continue to spin you, right round, right round, like a...