I kissed comment culture goodbye

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Experiences with Friendship and Connection

  • Several commenters report making close friends, partners, business contacts, even political allies via comment-based communities (forums, Nextdoor, Reddit, HN, IRC, gaming voice chat).
  • Others say they’ve never formed a single offline connection through comments, especially on HN and Reddit, which feel anonymous and transient.
  • Many note a life-stage effect: as they aged and built offline networks, the drive and energy to form new online friendships declined.

Platform Design and Its Consequences

  • HN’s lack of avatars, PMs, and notifications is seen as intentionally content-focused but connection-poor.
  • Older forums and BBSs (phpBB, LiveJournal, IRC) are remembered as better for relationship-building due to stable identities, signatures, and easier one-to-one follow-up.
  • Modern platforms prioritize engagement via endless feeds and upvote/downvote mechanics, which reward jokes, outrage, and conformity over vulnerability or depth.
  • Some praise smaller, topic-focused spaces (niche subreddits, Discord servers, local FB groups, livestream chats) as still capable of fostering real community.

Polarization, Toxicity, and “Enshittification”

  • Many feel that comment culture degraded around mid‑2010s with polarization, troll farms, and engagement optimization.
  • Comment sections on big sites are described as angry, repetitive, meme-driven, and hostile to dissent; good answers get buried.
  • Up/downvotes become “like/dislike” tools in emotional topics, driving hive-mind behavior and pushing out subject-matter experts.

Authenticity and the Rise of Bots/AI

  • Multiple commenters now doubt whether interlocutors are human, citing bot farms and LLM‑generated content.
  • One anecdote about a meme mis-handled by an AI model triggers broader concern that subtle cultural context is being lost or flattened.
  • Some argue bots aren’t even required: platform dynamics alone can create “false pluralities” and distorted perceptions of consensus.

Why People Still Comment

  • Many say they comment primarily to think, learn, and practice writing, not to make friends; drafting then deleting is common and still useful.
  • Others admit to a commenting “addiction” driven by dopamine from replies and arguments.
  • There’s disagreement over “ROI”: some see comment time as wasted socially, others as high‑value for intellectual growth, career serendipity, or modest connection—especially in smaller, “cozy web” communities.