Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed by the submission, the quality and utility of it is very low, so it's unfortunate that the submission has reached #1 on HN.
I suspect the brevity of the submission has made it easy comment fodder.
I think it expresses a majority sentiment among the tech industry, otherwise it wouldn't be #1 on HN. I think there's a gap in sentiment between people who upvote on HN and people who comment on HN
I thought it was good. It evoked a lot of mental images and feelings for me and was thought provoking. I enjoy these types of experiences, and its increasingly rare as I don't engage with literature much anymore. Therefore for me it had utility.
I learned that many people seem to share that sentiment, and further details and analogies about it from the discussion thread. It’s learning about others’ opinions, assessments, and thoughts.
Someone might make a little game or fun experiment and might post it on here. Someone might write a blog post that is giving their opinion about a coding paradigm or framework and post it on here. I don't know if in any of those cases I am learning something, but they are still something I expect to see on HN frontpage. At least: I thought they were acceptable. But I guess thats not the case? Only educational things are technically HN worthy? I will take your word for it.
It's just a little bit of a bummer tbh, sometimes I just want to have fun or feel something or read a certain articulation of something... But I have other places I can find that kind of stuff I guess.
Thanks for your reply and your concern for propriety!
> Someone might write a blog post that is giving their opinion about a coding paradigm or framework and post it on here. I don't know if in any of those cases I am learning something
You, specifically you, don't need to learn something, but is there any value to submitting an opinion about something where nobody learns anything? What if the blog post (or social media post) were one sentence: "React native sucks!" Would you consider that to be a good HN submission? Such a submission might provoke intense debate on HN, but the post itself adds absolutely nothing to the debate. It's just an expression of emotion.
The submission here is a mere 19 sentences and 144 words. And frankly, there's nothing interesting in those words. They're mostly platitudes.
> Only educational things are technically HN worthy? I will take your word for it.
> I just want to have fun or feel something or read a certain articulation of something... But I have other places I can find that kind of stuff I guess.
You continue to make a strong, incisive argument! Thanks so much, and thanks for the charity of discourse you show here. It's sad that such a sharp, critical mind's time is wasted by, what I can see now, such low quality, near-worthless submissions. I hope the standards don't continue to fall, just for your sake. On my end, I guess I'll just have to check out this "TikTok." Thanks for the rec.
I suspect the brevity of the submission has made it easy comment fodder.