I kissed comment culture goodbye

Of particular note: comment culture is how I managed to engage with local politics here in Chicagoland, through which I met a ton of my neighbors and got actively involved with campaigns and the local government itself. Those are all in-person relationships that were (and remain) heavily mediated by comments.

There’s also another category — people like you! I usually stop and read your posts in the same way my dad would a columnist in the paper years ago.

I think the author of the post was looking for something in the wrong place. Which is all good!

This might be me; I am older and have less time. The bar to novelty in my life was a lot lower in my late teens than it is now. But I can't shake the feeling that "something" has changed in the world around me. Every social medium, from the follower-only Mastodons to the heavily algorithmicized Twitter FYP is angry at something or dunking on someone.

(N.B. Sometimes I wonder if this is the nugget of truth behind the wisdom of having kids. That at some point humans become inflexible and recalcitrant but the act of having kids ties your own mood and outlook to the future of humanity as a whole rather than your own crotchety self.)

I've been here over a year and seem to be fairly well recognized at this point, but I don't think I could even confidently name another user in the same city as me.

Has HN really helped people connect in this sort of way?

To me, HN has almost always felt anonymous, in the sense that I don't recognize (hardly) any of the users that post (aside from maybe dang). A lot of times, I don't even look at the username.

I think this is a combination of a lack of an avatar that nearly all other social media platforms have (except maybe Reddit, which also feels anonymous for the same reason, but I don't use it much/am not a member), as well as the low contrast username.

HN seems to intentionally deemphasize the author, and draw the focus on the content of the article and comments. Which results in a lack of connection (again, likely by design).

But I've been around for almost 15 years, and can't think of a single person I've connected with outside of HN, and could maybe name less than a handful of users by their username.

Again, not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Just would be surprised if many people have made friends on HN (unless you're going out of your way/trying to build a network, which I guess some people likely do).

People who want to discuss things in good faith (which presumably includes you and I) and achieve consensus get bogged down in long and complicated discussions while those who have selfish motivations just do whatever they want largely without any cost. The overlap between people who are 'well-meaning' and 'successful' shrinks, leaving the well-meaning people angry and bitter - not generally at each other, but still sometimes unfortunately.

But, yes, the way the username is displayed matters as well, I rarely look at it.

You're #1 in karma on HN, so you are a kind of oddball: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

Also, Chicago is 3rd most populous city in the United States, which likely helps, because your odds of "meeting" someone online who happens to live in your city is higher than people who live in less populous areas.

Conclusion: everyone should move to Chicago. Chicago is amazing!

I've actually considered it. However, Chicago appears to be quite expensive, at least where I was looking.

Do you think it would be different though if you didn't create and post your own content? It certainly seems that contributing to discourse with just comments is quite limiting to creating deep enough social connections.