I make low effort comments all the time (and I’m trying to improve). We need to work together. Ultimately I think we are all on the same side. An encouraging comment can help a low efforter see the light.

Pedantic nitpicking is a greater threat to HN than low effort comments.

Talking at, and not with each other is worse than both :)

My experience has been there's a small Venn sliver of people who are both diligent enough to continue an extended thread and sociopathic(?) enough to completely ignore what the other person is saying.

That said, HN probably beats the average on finding those folks too. ;)

Tbh, I expect most of the downvotes are from people who weren't gaming in the late 90s.

I think a huge element of it is that comment boards like this are hugely impersonal compared to forums back in the day. There's very little room for socialization, so we don't socialize on these platforms, we proselytize, and sometimes it looks like socializing :)