HN has a big blind spot, in my opinion, around writing that isn't "purely technical". I've seen several cases of commenter complaining about "clickbait" for a blog post that I'd describe as "having a narrative hook and structure"

I also find it frustrating that articles expressing personality spicier than “safe for work milquetoast” are treated like out of pocket ranting.

Cognitive surrender evidencing itself en masse? :D

By this point I’m not sure why everyone isn’t in “default satire” mode.

This is usually my default position, but apparently that “gas town” article was Real and Serious and Distinctly Not Satire, and I started to feel reality fragmenting underneath me.

Oh wow you’re totally right now that I think about it that one burned me too

And immediately below the title are the tags "package-managers security satire ai"

I read it and saw LGTM and URL and was like "probably satire" but could not rule out it being real until like 30% in.

It's like a modern version of Poe's law.

Just below the title are the tags "package-managers security satire ai"

Yah well, I don't read all front-matter like that. Most of the time it's noise. Count it in the stuff that becomes cognitively invisible, like banner ads.

It's fascinating how someone can say that they "could not rule out it being real until like 30% in" and then when I point out that they could, since it says so at the top, they just dismiss that and declare that they don't read it, rather than consider that it's in the "pro" column for paying attention to such things. (And tags are very different in purpose from banner ads, so not reading the latter is no reason not to read the former. I've noticed that other things that some people don't read are titles and authors -- I make it a practice to read both.)

I think it's also fascinating that you can be so judgy, and felt the need to reply to yourself to announce this to the room instead of to me. Really, what's the point of that? Does it help you feel superior?

I've found the information density and accuracy of tags to be poor. I tend to ignore navigation infrastructure like this.

Note that I did not say it was not possible to determine it was satire promptly; as I said, I had ascribed it a high probability of it being satire early on. I also didn't need to announce that I had been uncertain. Telling the truth like this comes with psychological safety.

And psychological safety, in turn, depends upon people not coming out of the woodwork to congratulate themselves on being smarter than you because you were not quite so quick on the draw as them. I feel like this entire subthread just exists for this purpose, starting with Xandrius's "I guess it's time to rethink how sharp the HN folks truly are." That's what I sought to counter by admitting my uncertainty.

The pathetic bad faith whining in response is hilarious.