Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

Criticism is one of the best ways to learn to be better at what you do. "Hate this, hate that" may be negative but it is useful feedback from actual/potential users of your site/service/app/whatever.

HN is a far better site with useful comments than it is a site with solely positive comments.

/. has gone entirely to shit, but some subreddits are still good (it feels like the average user age has been suppressed down about seven years, though).

The problem is the revenue model. You can't be exclusive when you need to cater to as many users as possible.

You base this statement on a sample size of N=2. On many Show HN submissions I tend to see just the opposite, people act as test users/engineers/etc for free and then write their impressions.

The problem that you faced, I think, is one I (and others) have noticed before: HN response dynamics is not stationary, i.e. it tends to change quite a bit with time of day (different moods or geographic audiences?), time of week (TGIF or the reverse effect), and even by time of month (full moon?). There are many posts analyzing the optimal time to post.

Having your project (or thoughts) bluntly criticized publicly can be painful. One solution could be: (i) Closely read and re-read comments offering constructive criticism (ii) ignore "snarky", etc. comments but note their ratio to the constructive ones, if the SNR is low then you have to think what on your product triggered such an outpouring.

HN != "The Internet"

I somewhat agree with the OP... HN has (had) almost something of a "family" or at least "tightly knit community" vibe to it. Traditionally feedback here was expected to be honest and not sugared down, but polite in tone and constructive.

No one is saying that feedback here should consist of nothing but "Wow, that's GREAT. You're definitely going to be the next Zuckerberg." And no one expects all of us to get together around the campfire, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya. But there's no reason people can't be encouraging and supportive while also being totally honest.

Example:

"Congrats on the launch! Here's hoping your project succeeds wildly. I took a look, and while I like the Froozit and Gizamble features, I do kinda think the Frizgombit could use some improvement. I also have some concerns about how you will make money from this? Is the market for a Zvezkikit for octogenarians really big enough to support this? Anyway, best of luck!"

I mean, is it that hard to show a little support, throw some encouragement to the app launcher, while also giving useful feedback? This isn't "The Shark Tank" or an interview with pg (unless pg is the one giving the feedback, in which case it kinda is) where you go in mostly expecting to be challenged and not really encouraged.

All of that said, I don't think HN has totally descended into "nothing but negativity." I still see a lot of great comments and feedback here, although I would agree that the tone may have shifted a bit over the years.