My experience on HN for the last 15 years is that the tangential, loosely correlated, comments tend to not only be the most interesting but lead to the most interesting threads.

I would agree -- but this is not one of them. This is someone gratuitously patting themselves on the back at every turn. It feels like the kind of NPC dialogue you might find in an RPG

> It boggles my mind that the top comments on HN are now mostly just someone shouting into the void about self-absorbed topics that are (at best) loosely correlated to the article. This one is a shining example.

It's an inside view of something I'm curious about. It may be unrepresentative, but I'll take it over the repetitive high-level stuff you see all the time.

Yes I’d much prefer it over the same old articles about Musk drama and impending doom from AI.

It’s surprisingly easy to accidentally do a self-therapy-session in a comment box. Among other places.

This comment is just a longer and more critical version of saying that you chose not to upvote the other comment in question.

I kind of like that it flows with how real conversations go. But I can also see how it's annoying if you're hoping for in-depth discussions.

Karma-bait is everywhere on HN