That said, I think I know what the culprit is: money. Check out the headlines on the front page. How many titles contain a '$'? Yesterday I saw some big numbers: 100M for github, 20M for stripe, 10M for someone else, plus kayak IPO numbers. Today we've got kickstarter.

As a community, we've become obsessed with money. Bootstrapping revenue, angel rounds, VC funding, acquisitions, IPOs, croudfunding, etc. When people focus on money they get upset. There are a myriad of reasons for this, but the quick version is that it's human nature and basically unavoidable.

So, in short: we think too much about money, and as a consequence we're grumpy.

Especially in the tech scene, a lot of people see themselves as unappreciated geniuses. The idea that there's a good, simple alternative that will get mass adoption that they haven't thought of doesn't fit that narrative. There must have been a reason they already dismissed the idea, so they approach it skepticism. (The money thing is related to this - unappreciated geniuses deserve a good get-rich-quick scheme, after all.)

Parent suggested that despite this there are only ever thirty articles on the front page at a time, so we shouldn't see more finance ones.

I pointed out that this just means that the ratio of finance stories within that thirty is likely to be higher.

No. Parent's point was the same as yours: numerator increased and denominator unchanged implies fraction increased.

Recently I've been finding that my twitter feed is a much better way to get my dose of hacking related stuff -- if you follow the right people it's wonderful! (It's kind of sad that I have resorted to that though, since HN did open my eyes to a lot of things back in high school.)

I personally come here for tech related stuff (not an entrepreneur, don't particularly care to become one) but still find myself getting caught up in the latest funding BS news. Unfortunately, SV (and HN) seems to be getting watered down with a lot of money-chasers. Of course, I am sure someone, somewhere was saying the exact same thing 30 years ago, so whatever...

Community growth is hard to manage and HN has done amazingly well avoiding previous pitfalls like falling to trolls but now it looks like something new and more subtle is befalling it. :/

First, the original thread was overtly negative and that surprised me. I even commented in that thread saying as much. Generally, I think the HN community got that one wrong, and its obvious too because they got $1million in less than 24 hours which is more than anyone can say for half the projects that get posted here.

And on that note, the negativity, it seems to me, is largely due to the ballooning of this community and a bunch of half-baked, unoriginal, crowded-market ideas with uninspired product designs being posted. It seems everyone thinks that just because they use NodeJS, mustache, coffeescript and want to take a bottom-up approach to X for Y and apply to YC that makes them an entrepreneur. While these people are embarking on a learning process a "black cup of coffee" never hurt anyone.

But what's wrong with that? If this doesn't make them an entrepreneur what does? There is no magic to becoming an entrepreneur. It's not an elite group of people who have to pass a trial by fire. Everyone who wants to change things can be an entrepreneur. Anyone with a project and who big dreams for the project.It doesn't require a college degree, any connections or any credentials.

If anyone comes to me and tells me he is an entrepreneur I expect myself to be supportive. It's hard to do this and if we don't support each other who will?

Shitting on half baked ideas in my mind is a public service. I'm saying that it isn't negative, and that saying "looks cool" and "keep up the Great work" isn't nearly as helpful as "I would never use much less pay for this and here is why".

My point is that if people think constructive feedback is negative and they get butt hurt over their poorly received Show HN post, they probably aren't fit for entrepreneurial endeavors. That's all.... Just man up.

Constructive criticism is fair but most of the comments are straight on aggressive and in most cases not greatly useful or constructive. Many of them are pedantic. In fact, in my opinion most insightful comments are almost always the comments that don't paint the picture in black and white and take everything into consideration. It's almost obvious if you think of it. The smartest people understand and deal with nuances.

> Just man up. While this is true and most people should not take the a stranger on the internet too seriously. However, what most entrepreneurs do is hard. Trying to change the way things work. Most people give it all they have and still fail. What is wrong with being a little supportive? Why not help out a fellow hacker/entrepreneur/community member?

Criticism and friendliness are not mutually exclusive.

Kickstarter is a great place to raise some money for an interesting project. Get a couple of like minded hackers on side, write a decent proposal and demo a product and you too can get a cool million. I'm sure that is terrifying for a lot of people here. They are afraid because its a threat to their dreams of making it or the way they 'made it'. They are afraid because they don't have any ideas. They are afraid because they have a choice.

I love the little guys who are trying to upset the big players. I genuinely adore some of the players out there at the moment who are thinking big and trying to do or make wholly new things. It's fantastic to see that sort of creativity finally getting attention and funding. But I don't think everyone shares my enthusiasm.

I think some people are just pretending and playing at being the type of person they wish they were.