> For me it’s because I think I have very little time for real friends as a working parent; I text old friends from college and such, but my daily life is lonely outside my family, and logistics and chores consume a lot of that time. More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit.

It's the same for me, too. The people around me have few common interests, and conversations with them are awkward and sparse, and I've changed enough in my life that the communities I once was a part of are no longer feeling as welcome to me anymore. I've found the online communities to be both the best and worst outlet in my life, because they are directly tailored to my interests but are also not actually in my proximity.

>but are also not actually in my proximity.

I think this a benefit, not a negative.

Could you please explain more? Finding people online and discovering they live hundreds of miles away generally feels isolating to me, even potentially increasing the sense of isolation I feel from just the failed local friendships.

Sure. I think this is simply an idiosyncratic aspect of our personalities. While you find those online people who might be friends but live far away feels isolating, I find that getting to know the people who read and comment on my blog over months and years (sometimes we email back and forth) creates a real bond, much like like the epistolary friendships of the nineteenth century conducted only by mail between people who never actually met IRL. Some of my daily readers have been commenting for 15-20 years!

> More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit.

I’ve enjoyed discussion boards long before smartphones, but have been spending more time scrolling them on my phone than I’d like since 2020. This point, along with the author’s discussion of “the desire underneath the desire” is making me think that I’m actually just missing the types of conversations I’d have with coworkers at lunch or over happy hour beers before I started to work from home full time. Most of my close friends are not programmers or involved in startups, so this sort of makes sense to me as a missing social outlet.

I dont see a problem with HN in of it self. The problem is only when you spend disproportionate amount of time on HN (or twitter), vs other activities.

So very hard.