I'm using HTMX and had never heard of Datastar until today. I imagine there's a fair few people who saw the first post, looked into it and found other things about Datastar, and decided to post them.

This and other negative, yet argument-free, comments about datastar are what seem unnatural to me...

I thought the same before I saw your comment. Several posters are new or have also posted on previous posts about Datastar (and are oddly aggressive.)

Yeah, why does hypermedia attract folks who always sound so aggressive? It's a weird but common theme.

That’s a common HN pattern. Someone posts something about “why I switched to x” and it inspires someone else to link to the the x website, or even to other similar projects websites, and they all make it to the front page. It’s just a common synergistic phenomenon.

I think it was probably the copycat/followup effect rather than anything coordinated, but I haven't looked closely.

Trying to decide whether to merge the threads and/or which of them should 'win'...

If the datastar team was capable of such a coordinated marketing effort I doubt they'd be in the business of running a non profit, or building a niche HTML streaming framework. Or having a one off purchase model for pro.

I mean unless you consider me linking my dumb demos everytime someone accuses hypermedia of not being suitable for realtime/collaborative apps. That I'm 100% guilty of.

One submitted by me, and this one by others, both accounts are ~2012. Not exactly new account.