I like to call it informal case.

yes

It’s a techbro thing.

Sama does it too

You're writing in rust-inspired English it seems, omitting the punctuation mark at the end of your second sentence so it gets returned.

it's typesafe and efficient

e. e. cummings, techbro. who knew?

It’s a low effort flex. As in: you’re unimportant, this is unimportant, and I’m very busy, so I can’t or won’t bother to capitalize. Which is ironic because it’s more effort to not capitalize.

it's many more keypresses, and using modifier keys is generally rsi-prone

Without commenting on this subthread (I don't have an opinion), you or anyone else with this concern should look into sticky modifiers (modifiers that apply to the next key press without being held). They were a game changer for me personally as far as managing RSI, as I had a bad habit of tilting my wrist to eg type a capital T.

I use thumb keys (Glove80) which helps but I need to give that a try too

It was a thing back in the late 90s. I still do it in casual conversations with friends, less so in professional settings.

It's a gen X thing, like using "lol" to mean literal laughter

yes but there could be many possible reasons, for instance

- it's muuch faster on mobile

- you're aiming to convey litheness to potential target audiences who will know to recognize it as intentional litheness

- you've gotten used to minimizing the amount of keystrokes necessary for communicating things, to the point it's second nature

- you've worked a lot in the past with older nlp systems, where ignoring capitalization was a given for inputs anyhow, and just got used to treating it as syntactic cruft only strictly necessary in more formal settings ;)

With the current default mobile keyboards, I'd guess it's slower, not faster.

> it's muuch faster on mobile

This isn’t 1998. Mobile keyboards autocapitalize. You have to go out of your way to avoid capitalization on mobile.

When I grew up online in the 90s, on IRC, AOL/AIM, ICQ and web forums, it was extremely common. Most of the people I know from then still do it, and I still do it with them and in many other places, although for whatever reason I don't do it here. Although it's 50/50 when on their phones now that phones auto-capitalize by default now.

it's been a thing at least on irc for at least 20 years. i've been used to it for a long time.

Rules are put in place to be followed, for a reason. Capital letters at the start of the sentence increase readability. People who don't bother with them are being incosiderate towards their readers.

not at all

I have been thinking of this too. I find it super annoying to read and it looks unprofessional.

how does this bother you, what greater meaning does it have?

I tend to shy away from intentional illiteracy and laziness, both of which this is an example of. Not capitalizing does also affect readability. That said, I was honestly asking because I’ve seen it a few times on HN in the last couple of weeks and was curious if it’s coincidence or an actual trend.