The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

Unsurprisingly, I’ve found levity is best received when incorporating a kernel of fact or observation. Also, timezone matters.

Jokes are easy. Comedy is hard.

> There's clearly a pattern here. I'm not going to ban you now because you've also posted good comments, but please don't post any more personal attacks to HN, and please avoid tedious tit-for-tat entanglements with other users where the argument slides further to the right of the page as it slides further down in quality.

It sounds pretty stupid to say that I had a change of heart moment there, but I did. Whether or not I disagreed with another user on the internet was besides the point -- what was I getting out of /engaging/ with it that way? Was I acting the way I would want someone else to behave in a community? Of course not.

It turns out (as is often the case) that I was /extremely/ unhappy with my old job, burnt out and really struggling to keep it together and prevent the toxicity of my management chain from seeping into my personal life. Altogether very unsuccessfully, I might add. So I left. I didn't like the person I was turning into on the internet, pandemic or not.

Now, in retrospect, while I don't disagree with the content of what I said, I cringe with how I said it, and that I even engaged in the first place. In large part because that kind of engagement goes against the spirit of this forum which I cherish so much and find a reprieve from much of the rest of the internet.

A reprieve in large part due to the tireless, high quality work of @dang -- a reprieve that I myself threatened. Now isn't that self-destructive and ironic? Well, if you're reading this @dang, thanks for not banning me. You taught me a valuable lesson which I already knew but which just wasn't sinking in. I'd like to hope I am beginning to more deeply internalize the lesson you taught me that day.