I’ve also been around for years, but I don’t see it as a recent phenomenon. I’ve noticed that usually most top comments (for most topics) contain contra-arguments, or critical comments of any sort against the article. Sometimes it’s useful to learn about other perspectives, but often it feels forced or just plain negative/ego inspired. I could go back years and check old posts and notice that same trend. One famous example is the Dropbox post.

> most top comments (for most topics) contain contra-arguments, or critical comments of any sort against the article

That's true until the top comments start objecting to the objections. The current thread is a clear example. I call it the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... It's a surprisingly reliable phenomenon.

I think this is the beauty of HN: having people that does not share the hive mind from Social Media, edgy comments, contrarians, insiders, builders and people that reflects over the topics posted here.

New users are more likely to be positive, actually. HN has always been more negative, it even has the infamous Dropbox comment by BrandonM.

I'm also guessing the bounce rate on HN is pretty high. New users come in, see a post like this where the top 5 posts are all long and very negative, and they bounce. Who wants to stick around for that? Other people who like to post negative comments. It's a self-reinforcing cycle.

General bitter people stuck in the 9 to 5 grind

The vast majority of people in here are posers, i.e. not hackers in the old-school computer wiz sense, nor hackers in the Paul Graham sense.

HN has gone mainstream a decade ago. Now we've got the same audience of Ars Technica and r/technology.