That’s Reddit. On HN I sometimes find people with niche interests and expertise in all kinds of fields, which I like. It’s also relatively civilized. You don’t need to be a 4-chan edgelord to be not-normie.

HN broadly participated in the moral panic over lab leak theory being allowed to exist. This place is far more 'normie' than it likes to believe itself to be and is nowhere near as independent thinking as it pats itself on the back for being. But it does exceed Reddit in the percentage of posters who confuse their wealth for wisdom.

Reddit is just HN with lower standards of communication, puns, one word rebuttals, all that stuff is fair game there.

Being able to follow cultural norms of the local group is just about the least remarkable thing about any given group of humans. HN is not special.

Reddit are the nerds/losers of the online-o-sphere.

Most people here also belong to other communities and code switch how they write.

It is an interesting comment in itself. Does HN ( and other online communities ) have their own peculiar jargon and it is used to identify in-group? I definitely noticed some recurring phrases, but it does not appear to be.. say.. as obvious as 4chan or imgur.

It's less jargon and more tone. Whereas a sarcastically snarky retort might fly on most forums, here it's more likely to net you downvotes. But the same content expressed without the sarcasm will be better-received.

What sort of online world are you considering here? Does it include facebook, twitter and reddit? Or do you mean the deep, niche autism-adjacent online world?