Maybe it's just because I'm part of the old-fart grey-hair "get off my lawn" crowd...

Stuff like "haha xD" is fine for online chat, but seems unprofessional and is inappropriate in something like a HN submission, especially if you're trying to get people to look at a project.

And as a counterpoint to brieflify, there's:

http://longform.org/

https://longreads.com/