Absolutely. Its funny when people on HN unironically claim this site to be a tiny miraculous exception.

This really is the most friendly forum I've been on that isn't something ultra-specific like crownvic.net

I'm new here but I agree. The ratio of discussions to arguments here is like the inverse of most large forums.

Its not perfect of course, neither am I.

Is that a forum for people with crown Victoria vehicles?

Yeah. I'm not signed up there, just end up finding advice and docs there often if I'm fixing something on my Vic.

Was not expecting to see crownvic.net on HN! Definitely the best and friendliest resource for the Panther platform!

The Panthers show up when you least expect them.

A comfy tank on wheels!

Honestly I saw more petty drama on the Toyota Yaris forums than I ever do here

I'm guessing this is 99% because the Yaris has a stickshift option and someone went on the forums to dunk on automatic users

Sure if you agree with the majority you don't run into a lot of toxicity.

But centering your ideological bubble is its own form of toxicity that is enabled by the internet.

There are a lot of things I disagree with the majority on here. But it's more like in a real life convo, most disagreements don't need to turn into huge debates in the first place, let alone result in name-calling and group-shaming.

> There are a lot of things I disagree with the majority on here

Such as? Are any of those disagreements ideological?

I don't like any tech gadgets, don't care a lot about digital privacy, prefer imperial measurements, think dynamic types are the best for high-level code, am opposed to ipv6, think Golang is pointless, want an official Linux desktop OS (not just kernel) to exist, think adults shouldn't be playing video games. And have said all those things repeatedly here.

If that all sounds too non-spicy, well, even mentioning the smaller things like JS vs TS on a mainstream Reddit page got people calling me a moron and my comment hidden because the score got too low. If I said it on a different page, maybe it would've been +100 score and everyone disagreeing with me booted instead, but that's not any better. Learned quickly not to bother with there.

HN isn't really a place for plain political discussions, so I don't participate in those. They do exist though, and end up getting locked. I'd probably be more right-wing than most.

Right, try participating in one of those political discussions here and see what happens.

Also using reddit as a baseline is like using a cesspool tank as a baseline of sanitation.

I've read through them here, they're not bad at all. There's a majority opinion, and people are disagreeing, but there's real content there instead of campaign slogans and insults. But HN rules say it's not for politics, so I avoid participating.

So what is your non-cesspool forum example that isn't Reddit? Twitter seemingly got taken over by bots early on, Facebook pages were a disaster at least when I was in college, and those are the big ones.

I think its worth saying that its a gradation, some places are better than others with HN tending to the better. But fundamentally, I don't think large non-toxic forums exist.

X optimizes for engagement and as studies have shown, that means optimizing for rage bait.

Reddit optimizes for rage bait too but includes a voting system that hides unpopular opinions, so any person that conflicts with the majority is marginalized. So on top of being full of rage bait, its an echo-chamber and that is before even talking about the powermod problem.

HN is much like reddit in style, so fundamentally HN also tends towards an echo chamber.

And by echo chamber, I mean a cringe circle jerk: a New Yorker article called it "performative erudition".

HN doesn't feel like Reddit, yes there are votes but it's one page and a totally different algo, and different user base. Guess we have different levels of satisfaction with that.

Gotta say though, it's rich hearing this from New Yorker.

You said its rich not wrong.

The worst part is that God forbid the genders were reversed and you had a male only app to discuss their relationships.

The app would be banned within a few seconds and 90% of people here would celebrate it.

Majority of people assume the following:

1. Men don't deserve to have private spaces

2. Men can't be victims of abuse (sexual, physical or else)

3. Men don't need to be protected from toxic relationships

4. Women don't need to ask men for consent

Men here refers to all men, including trans men, homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals, etc.

Perhaps, it's time that we have an honest discussion about the realities of living in the world as a man in 2025.

If you're reading this and find my comment in bad taste, or that it frustrates you, I highly encourage that you take sometimes and introspect as to why you feel that way.

I'm glad, I'm not the only one feeling this way. My experience lately has been that if you are a man, you are just bad, regardless of if your behavior is actually condemnable or not.

Worse than that, if you speak against any of the nonsense coming to you, you are extra bad. And they are surprised that fertility has fallen all over the place, seems like intended objective to me.

s/Sometimes/By default/

It used to be so that the Village Crazy got called crazy and either they figured out "shit, I'm crazy" and toned it down or they just lived alone being crazy.

Now the Village Crazy can find others with their exact flavour of crazy online and think that it's cool and everyone is doing it. Then they get deeper and deeper into their crazy, maybe transitioning into other flavours of crazy.