But I'm guessing that's not their only goal, especially since the topic is of course a major personal investment for the writer.
What if the exercise of expressing themself is a primary goal, and this is how they wanted to do it?
What if they want to communicate more, to a smaller audience, maybe within that community, where some people will invest more time in reading than the median HNer?
You might want to read it and think about some of it, what would you do in the same situation, etc?
Having been in the same kind of mood at times, I can totally understand the motivation to write this all down and walk out the door with two middle fingers in the air saying "I QUIT".
It's unfortunate that your takeaway was "TL;DR plz, also stop whining". HN's rules specifically call out this behavior:
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Your comment comes off as a very shallow attempt at critical feedback, and I have a hard time believing it's intended to do anything other than tear the author down.
With the groundwork thus established, the eventual crumbling of the community was all the more engaging.
It affected me because I'm the target audience -- someone who cares deeply about both modular synths, and about communities being good to their contributors. If someone's merely one of those things or the other, the post will probably strike them as rambling in one way or another, and that's arguably fine because they're not the target audience.
That being said, tearing down a post because it didn't speak to you is, exactly, a shallow dismissal.
Expressing yourself clearly and to the point makes a big difference in reader engagement and (ultimately) understanding and support for your POV.