Tell HN: HN has lost the joy for me
There was a time I would come to HN to get some respite from the depressing state of reality. Ukraine war or climate crisis would drive me to despair, and I'd try to get a little endorphin rush by dodging those same topics here and reading about neat things people build or cool new technologies or products. The light has gone out lately. I can't blame AI for all of it. there are a lot of AI stories, sure - but something else has changed. Even the show hn section doesn't sparkle anymore. That seem to be all libraries for doing complex stuff. Like everyone is pivoting to deliver more complex work in the face of vibe coding. Where's the fun stuff? Where's the joy?
Discussion Highlights (14 comments)
dude250711
Apparently, new gamedev meta is to not show gameplay early since it can be stolen via AI and released before you do.
k310
I think there are real needs that go unaddressed, while people create solutions to non-needs, because they are "cool and exciting" even if they address no other need than being "cool and exciting" (which skyrockets your planned IPO) until the market decides that it solves nothing else, and creates even bigger problems, especially environmental. Those real needs won't go away. Until addressed. What are they? Find out add address them.
etienne_l
We are spoiled
popalchemist
Broadly speaking, all the progressives and creatives have left HN. It began several years ago. Now, this place is filled with a certain type of person... There are many reasons for it but part of it is that the moderation team actively curtails all discussion of progressive or political topics even as the world tilts into chaos and strife due to technological issues that are relevant to this community and its parent company. They claim it is in service of maintaining a conflict-free community and that they are "apolitical" but that is a deception, a straight up lie - censorship of speech is INTRINSICALLY political and the class whom it benefits the most is the class in power. That means the censorship policy here is literally authoritarianism in action. Just dressed up as innocent old "moderation policy". It's a lie. And anyone and everyone who has ever spoken out against Trump, Sam Altman, etc, on this site finds out very quickly that they are subject to thought policing. Either explicitly with moderation actions or implicitly with the threat of a ban -- or, more insidious, the shadow ban. Which the mods here are known to use. (You are silenced without knowing it.) So, naturally, the only kind of personality who would condone or enjoy such authoritarian suppression of speech which benefits the rich and stifles all opposition to their will would be -- you guessed it -- people who are themselves uncritical authoritarians. The "top down authority" model makes sense to them. These people may not recognize themselves by that label. Nevertheless it is a psychological type and it has to do with the structure of the parent-child relationship. It is still prevalent in America, especially in red states (though it isn't limited to red states -- other cohorts might be religious families, families of european descent, families with old money or strong patriarchal figures...) where the parent is the "boss" and the child must conform to what is expected. Those people internalize a "whatever the boss says is right and who am I to fight it" attitude. Those are the ones who are left behind when all the sensible adults recognize that the speech here is cooled, stifled, or outright silenced in service of the VC's who are actively burning the world to the ground.
altairprime
I’ve switched to /new rather than front page, because the good hacker stuff is being lost in all the boring manager stuff that has a stranglehold on the front page. But part of what you’re seeing is that the HN front page resembles HBR rather uncomfortably these days: endless posts about the latest developments in management theory and practices, except about AI minions instead of human ones. Yawn. I’d rather scroll through the raw feed where I can find amazing things like the plasma antenna from this morning :D
augustkjdart
That’s really sad to hear, coming from someone who just joined hn cuz I wanted something different
d3Xt3r
> Where's the fun stuff? Where's the joy? It's there, you just have to look harder. Like this story about Vecos, which fits your definition of "fun stuff", was posted earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984984
sammy0910
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49660482 There’s this post from a few weeks ago, if you just wanna filter out all the AI content
bthallplz
As some others have mentioned, the /new page is a better source for the quirkier stuff. I'd recommend checking out the HN blogs newsletter, which rounds up a lot of those types of things since they're items that were posted to personal blogs: https://hnblogs.substack.com
dang
Maybe this will cheer you up? Selected fun things in HN's intended spirit: https://x.com/hackernews We wanted to do things like this for ages but never had time. Justin at YC has been nailing it (I'm biased, of course) and a bunch of us have been enjoying nominating candidates for this treatment - a bit like HN's own second-chance pool ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 ), but through this different channel. Anyone who wants to send a nomination, please do! hn@ycombinator.com is best.
MaxHoppersGhost
Get your T levels checked.
platevoltage
I feel that. Not that I was around for this, but look back to the demo scene. You used to be able to show off a cool animation that you made using a seldom-used feature on a Commodore 64, or console, and that was a really cool thing to look at. Now it's people talking about how they orchestrated a bunch of agents. Its not fun.
willmeyers
https://news.ycombinator.com/pool is a better frontpage in my opinion.
ravenstine
The excitement over the little wins has largely evaporated. I think this is more of a reflection of what AI has done to the coding process itself. It used to be that you could take pride in relatively little things, like improving the performance of a single function that makes an application more responsive. It didn't necessarily have to be exciting to everyone, but you could feel that satisfaction. Now we really don't even get to have that sort of satisfaction. AI forces us to focus only on the big picture. When people don't feel the satisfaction over their own little wins, it's hard for them to imagine why anyone else would. HN is still one of my favorite sites, though. Even when I get downvoted, at least it's primarily by people who can understand the subject matter. Every other site has people absolutely talking out their ass, especially when it comes to... ugh... AI .