Re:Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old
by dang on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @06:01PM
(#23471440)
It looks legit to me. Keep in mind that the earliest comments to appear in a thread are often the reflexive ones, because they take the least effort (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). In this case there isn't much to reflexively react negatively to, so there are a lot of congratulations.
I think this post is doing well because it combines two things that HN readers like a lot: (1) business success stories, as long as the succeeder is someone the reader identifies with; (2) all things meta. Meta is the crack of internet forums. Oh, and a runner-up: (3) references to old things. The passage of time is what confers internet legitimacy on things. So here we have a trifecta.
There isn't massive overlap between the congratulatory commenters and the users who upvoted the submission, and among those who did both, plenty are long-established HN users. This is not what manipulation tends to look like.
Re:Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old
by kossTKR on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @06:10PM
(#23471523)
Those are some good points. As i said in another post, i have probably become a little too cynical after working in the field for so long - so congratulations to these dudes.
I think this post is doing well because it combines two things that HN readers like a lot: (1) business success stories, as long as the succeeder is someone the reader identifies with; (2) all things meta. Meta is the crack of internet forums. Oh, and a runner-up: (3) references to old things. The passage of time is what confers internet legitimacy on things. So here we have a trifecta.
There isn't massive overlap between the congratulatory commenters and the users who upvoted the submission, and among those who did both, plenty are long-established HN users. This is not what manipulation tends to look like.