Ask HN: Why are you here?
Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.
Then, because of my own hope & purpose, I felt like I was able to contribute to hope & purpose in other people.
But things are changing.
Myself, I've lost hope. My hope that 'things will get better' is lost.
I used to believe that startups were meant to solve painful problems. But the most painful problems in the world aren't even discussed here.
And I believe we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the fabric of society is itself 'at risk' of collapse.
So now, I most frequently come here for a distraction. To drown out the noise of reality with some overly complicated technical write-up, or some arm-chair theoretical physics, or plead with smart people to look deeper.
Today I'm here, hoping, to find a little hope.
Why are you here?
149 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadone of the things I think makes HN unique is that we can discuss things without "having to agree that the fabric of society is at risk of collapse." Whether it is or isn't, the teardown of a T1 router is cool.
I often feel the need to comment in ways that i hope remind others that not everybody agrees with their opinions. You can call it trolling, I hope to add information or at least amusement.
But mostly I enjoy the acquisition of new bits of (probably not immediately useful, but new to me) technical knowledge from others who share the same joy.
If you are saying that HN discussion mostly steers clear of U.S. culture-war drama, I think I agree and appreciate that. I hadn't really thought of it, until you posted it. Kudos.
I used to go to Twitter to get some of the same technology thought exposure, but the usefulness / drama ratio seems to have decreased dramatically since I was there last (but I realize that might just be who I follow).
But more seriously, it's just a higher bar of contribution than other forums on the internet with more interesting articles and points of view.
> Being part of a community that was solving problems, "improving the world," gave me hope and purpose.
This attitude in tech is honestly exhausting. It reminds me of that fake Tech Crunch Disrupt scene in the first season of Silicon Valley. The sooner you kind of give up on this and have fun with the problems you have the easier it is to enjoy your work, imho.
Isn't far from a lot of mission statements
If google had kept the same exact same mission statement from day one, would that mission statement actually have an impact on protentional employees? Or would the court of public opinion have more sway? I can say as an n=1 data point, mission statements mean nothing to me.
I guess I'm saying it's important to think critically about the business case, and not just take founders at their word that they "won't be evil".
I think the problem is that - at least in the United States - the social fabric is being burnt to a crisp because everyone cares only for their followers (which is another way of caring for their own image) - rather than do what is good and moral. If we cared more about our family, real friends and local communities, rather than superficial remote usernames, the social fabric would be fine. I do, unfortunately, think it is too late. I don't think we can re-train billions of people to go back. So now we have to go through. Good luck everyone.
that may be true for the wider tech community. but the FOSS community is still driven by idealism. and that's why i am here. hackernews has a wider topic range than places that focus on FOSS only and it has a significant (but not dominant) following among FOSS enthusiasts.
basically what used to be kuro5hin and what slashdot maybe still is.
I think the zealotry is being protectionist trying to keep things fun and useful and not tainted by the need to extract a profit
if you don't see that then maybe you are not meeting the right people. those who do the work just get along fine. they are not bad-mouthing others for not doing it right.
and people who refuse to work with non-free software, that's their choice, that doesn't make them zealots. and i haven't seen any example of where that would make a community toxic.
that doesn't mean that there is no toxicity, i am sure there is. but not more than what you can find right here on hackernews.
We don't need this place to turn into another typical comment section on the internet. Go to one of those places if you want to shout at other people who are not there with open minds.
the most pressing problems in my eyes are:
* the elimination of poverty
* racism and prejudice
* gender-equality
* sustainable development
* education
each of these topics have been discussed here, but they could benefit from more attention.
(which will have various consequences like social unrest, wars)
That the world moves more and more to totalitarianism and surveillance and brainwashing? (China, Russia, Turkey, ..., ordered by population, the list is very long, depending on what critera you apply)
Many people on here have similar life experiences and interests to me so it’s nice to be around those folks without the vanity of normal social media.
Re: your loss of hope, I completely disagree. Quality of life has never been better and there are many incredibly smart people trying to solve very hard problems to make it even better. There is and always has been suffering. And there is and always have been people trying to fix it.
I also disagree that the social fabric is at risk of collapse. I only see things on the internet that makes it look like the world is falling apart. But my reality, and my community’s reality doesn’t even get close to matching that.
The best advice I can muster is "be the change you wish to see in the world". Giving up hope is just passing the buck. You'll never have the whole world on your side, but you also don't need it to be.
> relatively homogeneous cultural environment
Though, I'm sure this is subjective and can be argued, so I'd rather not go into details.
Social fabric is something that needs to collapse every generation or two and get rebuilt. Imagine living in the social fabric of 1940s. No thanks.
Folks here are smart as hell, so HN has always been a way for me to be a little fish in an ocean. Keeps me humble and I learn a lot.
Why are there so many lost/doomer threads recently. People starting to realise delivering meaningless "value" to shareholders while turning the Earth in to an uninhabitable scorched, polluted, plastic covered wasteland was not such a good idea? Need someone to say its okay sweetie, its not your fault, you definitely couldn't have seen thaaat one coming. A guilty conscience?
I suspect layoffs and recession is hitting home.
Things HN has done for me:
* Gotten me a job
* Helped me expand my technical skills
* Helped me promote my books and side projects
* Entertained me
* Kept me up to date on tech and science news
* Allowed me to "give back" when I have useful advice
* Helped me realize I never want to found a startup
Also want to give a shout-out to HN's moderation team, who do a great job of keeping trolls at bay and encouraging constructive conversation.
* Helped me realize I never want to found a VC-backed start-up
When it's time for the investors to come in, because there is a right time, it's time to hand over the reins to that type of operator.
We can? Maybe I'm on the wrong site...
2. Get a sense of what people in technology are thinking about technology and society (though no doubt quite skewed).
3. It's my only connection or source of insight into the Imperium, living as I do in a European province. Admittedly it is not much, but I can't do twitter, facebook, reddit or American news: it's too too bad.
I like the culture of this website. I don’t really come here to solve big world problems. I mostly come to learn new things and see new perspectives.
In a world of instagram, tik tok, and Reddit, this place is a godsend. I’ve tried to quit all social media and spend my time on more productive websites and places. I found myself checking and commenting on HN more.
I feel like even the worst comments here are just way better than a place like reddit. I’ve found a couple other small sites i like to visit as well.
It’s not. We live in a unique time in history (living memory at least) where all parts of society, hidden and unhidden, are interacting in real time globally. We’ve never had this before!
What we as kids and our parents/grandparents as adults mistook for idyllic society where we all get along and life is great and nobody has problems, was in reality a thin veneer draped over a seedy underbelly of raw mess. People pretended to fit in. A lot.
Ask anyone from an underrepresented or even repressed group how great that society was. Bet they’ll say it wasn’t.
Society isn’t collapsing. It is revealing itself. This is the real humanity. The way it’s always been. Varied and messy.
As for why I’m here – same reason I’ve always been online. Because likeminded people who get a kick out of similar things as myself are few and far between in real life. Online, there’s plenty. HN in particular has a good mix of high signal discussion on interesting topics.
This is why I'm more optimistic these days since I think the speed of information is going to keep any dangerous movements in check and a minority. Because opposition can band together online, there really can't be a growth in a "join or die" kind of sense as a growing movement would impose.
What does that even mean? Is it revealing itself as being intrinsically ephemeral or something? How is that not a distinction without a difference?
The societal unity we remember never existed. People who are different were just hiding or invisible.
To avoid stereotypical-for-usa examples (gays, immigrants, blacks), go ask a teenage goth growing up in a small town in the 90’s what it was like to be the only goth person in their entire environment. Bet it was super fun and they felt totally accepted by all.
Now go back 30 more years and someone in a similar position wouldn’t even have had access to information that would tell them it was possible to be anything other than $vanilla. They felt different and had no way of knowing that’s okay.
The Jackass Forever documentary, of all places, shared a really good insight when they said ”You can’t even comprehend what a big deal MTV was in the 80’s.”.
The phrase “ignorance is bliss” has been bouncing around my head these past few years.
The tech stuff is cool too, I guess.
Yes there's real problems in the world, but focus on you, your family, and friends and neighbors. If you want to do something "more" than that, then go and live somewhere else in the world where people are really hurting and could use some help.
The rest of this tech stuff is just a job to earn money for the above, it's not your purpose.
To be clear, I don't feel like a tech worker. Tech/code is just one of the mediums I use for my writing.
In time, I hope I'll realize my purpose as being someone that inspires others with my writing.
But, right now, this is the best that I've got.
I come here to read all these posts complaining about having too many distractions.
I think I've summed my HN usage pretty nicely here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29673736
> "improving the world", "solve painful problems"
This is sales pitch. 99% of the times it actually means "we want to appear as cool (and 'benevolent') as possible while we bill you monthly". It's just a facade. All they care is the might buck, and everything else is debatable.
Doesn't that suck though? Is it too much to ask to have the majority of my life spent doing something worthwhile?
People (and the mods like dang play a huge part here too) here generally believe _deeply_ in problem solving, looking as objectively as possible at whatever the topic is, and just learning more. There's a genuine curiosity here that resonates with me. I'm a deeply curious person and really find dramatics as a distraction from actually learning about topics.
I've also found that for just about any topic, there's always someone here that knows about it deeply to have an opinion (not just regurgitating an armchair opinion they read in another article, but what seems to be one borne out of some knowledge or experience) and is willing to talk about it in detail without dumbing things down, and there's a debate that ensues.
For all those reasons, HN is the site I frequent the most and is the most enriching.
Beyond the western borders of this little town, the tech gold rush has both expanded to epic proportions, affecting all the economies in the world, and also gone through enough booms and busts that the phrase "gold rush" seems somehow off.
As more and more young'uns join and jaded veterans return to throng the tavern alike, it often seems to be on the brink of either exploding with the largest gun fight in history, or jumping the shark.
And yet, against all odds, it retains its original magnetism - drawing throngs that grow in number and diversity while seers like [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.y... and [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek](https://new... continue to return - dispensing worldly wisdom worth its weight in gold from corner tables.
The secret is the man at the corner of the bar @dang, always around with a friendly smile and a towel on his shoulder. The only sheriff in the west who still doubles as the friendly bartender: always polite, always willing to break up a fight with kind words and clean up messes himself.
Yes a cold-hard look from him is all it takes to get most outlaws to back down, yes, his Colt-45 "moderator" edition is feared by all men, but the real secret to his success: his earnest passion (some call it an obsession) for the seemingly sisyphean task of sustaining good conflict - letting it simmer but keeping it all times below the boiling point based on "the code":
"Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression."
May the last great tavern in the West and it's friendly bartender-sheriff live long and prosper.
There are very nice people who can help you with difficult-to-find information. As in : "I remember this very obscure game in the 90s who came in some shareware magazine bla bla bla" 20 min later "That must be super-Ultroon the Mechanic Dinosaur, I played it a lot..."
I agree, save for a few topics, cryptocurrency seems to devolve into two different circle jerks, and anything mentioning Rust is at risk for nice spat in the comments.