Ask HN: Would your life be better if you stopped visiting HN?
I've been reflecting on my online consumption habits, and I'm starting to question whether HN is a net positive in my life.
It's by far the most intelligent and interesting community I engage with, but if I'm being honest I think it has just made me cynical about technology, entrepreneurship and my own career.
I think my life would improve if I stopped visiting HN (and Reddit/YouTube/etc.), but it's definitely not easy to shake the addiction and the 'fear of missing out'.
That's my thoughts on the topic, but I'll put the question to you... Would your life be better if you stopped visiting HN?
61 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadI made it about 1.5 months before relapsing. It was difficult at first but easy after a few days. It’s funny how when I returned 1.5 months later seemingly nothing had happened in that time. There was hardly anything to “miss out on”. I plan to do it again…but not at this exact moment :-)
It's definitely made me a bit more cynical too, but to be honest... so has most of the internet. It's very easy to see the worst in humanity if you spend too long on any of these social media services.
I gave HN a break for a bit, didn't make any difference. It's like having an interactive newspaper of news I might be interested in when there's not much happening with my RSS reader.
One thing I started recently is a weekly digital sabbath: no screens on Sundays. I'm enjoying the change.
Hacker News, the _link list_ is still fine and surfaces interesting things at least every other day. The comment section however has fared less well, the heroic and thankless job the moderators have been doing notwithstanding.
At some point later this year given some time, I will probably reduce HN to that first part. Plug it into a custom link aggregator / filter / agent I have yet to write.
Delete my fifteen year old reddit account before the IPO. Find myself a nice, old school forum off the beaten path for the human element. And then I'll finally be free from the "modern" Internet.
2024 is going to be a good year.
But... I'm not that heavy of an HN commenter. I read them, especially on links where I have thoughts, but I generally stop scrolling once something annoys me.
However, I do have a gripe. Many posts negatively impact upon my self-esteem. Reading HN I get the impression that there are lots and lots of folks earning huge salaries at very important companies. Lots of others have founded startups, raised $millions and in many cases have had massive windfall exits.
This is basically the worst part of any social networking service now. They highlight the breakout success stories, geniuses and outliers so much that it becomes easy to assume everyone else is doing much better than you are.
For average Joes it's seeing the influencers and celebrities on Instagram and TikTok, for developers it's Hacker News and Reddit.
No doubt the community is intelligent, but compassion, honesty, intellectual honesty and willingness to accept other peoples viewpoint (and they yours) are more important.
Many people come to HN, myself included to distract themselves from other things. They bring that frustration with them. If I were to make a forum, it would be structured much differently. The first to post sets the tone of the "discussion" if we call it that. It is often a hoard of frustrated people (mostly men) screaming at each other in rhetorical combat.
I really suggest people set their maxvisit and minaway settings. My minaway is 180 minutes. I am ratcheting down my maxvisit.
From my perspective the conversation here is generally awful. It’s the same tired faux genius rhetoric over and over again. How many times will I read “these companies are just way too bloated” as the top comment on a layoff post? It’s always written with perfect confidence as if the commenter understands the chaos of the tech industry better than anybody else. People upvote it because it sounds good without ever thinking critically about what they just read. Well written, confident, and reassuring to me (as one of the few competent tech employees)? Upvote!
How many times will people reply to the top comments with some vaguely related point they desperately want to make and that they feel is worth hijacking your attention for? Every single time.
How many times will a top comment ask questions that are clearly answered in the link? We’re not even allowed to tell them to RTFA because that’s against HN rules. Posting the comment isn’t though.
I stick around for those rare diamonds in the rough. The moments where an actual, proven genius logs in to post their yearly comment. Usually because somebody posted a link to their work and the top comment has hopelessly misunderstood it.
And, the people at the bottom of the org chart often see it the clearest. They know what people are actually working on.
If you haven't worked in one of the super bloated companies, it's hard to describe exactly how wild it is. Really, people aren't trying to sound smart, they've just had their butt in a seat at one of the places.
You're going to have to wade through garbage for high quality content pretty much everywhere, and HN has been consistent and valuable to me over the years for sure.
> I stick around for those rare diamonds in the rough.
> The moments where an actual, proven genius logs in
so you are the one to judge who is a genius :). a little condescending?
imo hn has become quora-ified. anecdotal commentary has become common.
Yes you are, it’s not against the rules. From the guidelines:
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
It’s right there as an example of what you can respond: “The article mentions that”.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It used to be that most posts were worthwhile. Sad to see what it's devolved to.
I'm aghast at how many comments these days are against a startup/company doing well. It used to be Startup News, I think the branding change was the turning point.
I thought one topic was pretty amusing, where people were discussing financial planning for millionaires. The top was full of cynical replies or reddit style rants by people who aren't millionaires, like maxing out insurance. The middle had people who did make their money and lost it. The bottom-ish had the actual rich folk.
You gotta search for the geniuses. 90% of people are in the bottom 90%. Someone asks for the key to happiness. Your average person will say "diet, exercise, sleep". This is insightful to those at the bottom, and those who are above average won't disagree. Then some dude comes along and says "life is suffering" and rants about why chasing luxury is going to make you unhappy. That dude is going to be downvoted or ignored.
FB was making me feel annoyed. Quitting it helped a lot. With HN it is a bit harder because some content here is actually useful. I find avoiding comments on submissions about layoffs, Google, Meta, Apple, lawsuits, etc. helps me be more positive.
Saying these sites are great resources for information, but not great places to express emotion.
It actually filled a void that Slashdot left. Something happened around the time I started visiting HN more where ./ became this really weird echochamber and hot takes were abound. Believe it or not, it seems to me like HN is one of the few places where there is a lot of self-moderated and rational discourse.
So the short answer is no.
my life would be better if I stopped visiting reddit, though. it's become way too much of a hive mind and anything contrary to the prevalent groupthink gets you buried or even suspended from the whole site. it seems like a bizarre social shift has occurred over the past few years, and perhaps I've gotten a bit older and wiser as well.
YouTube can at least be more productive and fun.
overall, less social media is good for me. I've even gone back to forums and IRC.
I guess it's hard to prove, but I think with fomo, anything truly important will eventually find it's way to you.
If I add the time I spend on NH over the week, some weeks it can probably reach 3-5 hours. That's 3-5 hours reading about something, checking comments, sometimes replying. But there is no substantial, measurable gain that would justify spending this much time.
If instead I spend the same amount of time reading a book, meditating, socialising, working, or even staring through the window - all of these would be time better spent, in my assessment.