Ask HN: Why has the comment section become so pessimistic?

I've found that HN has become increasingly cynical, and I'm trying to understand why. Not snarky; serious question.

Is it simply because being pessimistic makes you sound smarter?

Partly, what you're noticing is a reaction to the vast quantity of baloney that the tech industry generates. (Which baloney might be interesting to taxonomize into techno-utopianism, marketing hype, DilbertCo PHBism, ...)

Partly, it's because HN's stereotypical user is an engineer. Engineers are supposed to tend critical / cynical / pessimistic - otherwise stuff just doesn't work, and Sales gets away with pre-selling "production starts next quarter" pedal-powered supersonic flying cars.

Partly, it's because folks here recognize that the world has huge problems (injustice, wars, climate change, etc.) which neither their stereotypical skills nor personal aspirations (write awesome code, engineer a cloud solution, scale a startup, take their unicorn public) do anything meaningful to address. And that if things really go to sh*t...then all their 1337 skillz, achievements, money, and possessions will be worth far less than some old Luddite geezer's bunker in Montana.

(I've noticed for a while that I have a pretty critical / cynical / pessimistic tone here on HN. For me, that's partly because many HNer's feels like they're a fraction of my age, with a rather narrow education and worldview - so they can need reminding that a whole lot of actually-relevant stuff happened before the web was a thing, and the world doesn't "just work" because of {optimistic generalities & hand-waves that a parent might use in explaining society & economics to a kid}):

There are some things that are often even easier than that:

1. not criticizing and not doing anything constructive

2. criticizing while doing something destructive, e.g. like framing every criticism in opposition to doing something constructive, as if the peole who are constructive cannot criticise and those who criticise cannot be constructive.

I would not be able to tell at a glance whether someone critical is doing something constructive or not. Accusing critics of not doing anything constructive is itself not constructive, but just evasion.

As you said, being critical to a certain degree is what allows is to make things that work. And there is enough stuff happening to be mad about.

I wonder whether those who feel the place has become too critical are not actually in dire need to face that cricism instead of finding some exuse why they would rather not.

Maybe it's because people had delusions and realized they believed in false gods and false religions whose promises never came true.