There are a lot of people who don't understand what this place is for. Hacker News is a cocktail party. It's a bunch of smart people getting together and shooting the breeze about whatever we see on the front page. If you understand that, you'll fit in fine.
Lots of new users here don't understand that.
If you spend any time on the internet, you're quickly trained that discussion forums are places for combat. The goal is to look as smart as possible while tearing everybody else down. To have an unrefuted comment is to win, and nobody is going to let you do that so they'll tear your comment apart line by line. Naturally, that person is a moron and needs to be told so, preferably by turning his own trick against him and tearing his comment apart. Stop me if this sounds familiar.
That explains why the hardened slashdot veteran gets such a strange reception here. Have you ever been at a party where there was a guy who just didn't belong there? The belligerent know-it-all butting into conversations? The drunk guy in a room full of sober people? The uninvited casual racist? We've all seen what happens. People drift away from him wherever he goes, sometimes stranding some poor soul talking to him, but generally trying as best as possible to continue the party as normal and hoping he doesn't disrupt it further. Nobody wants to confront him and ask him to leave directly, but they all sure hope he'd get the hint on his own.
That's where we are here today. Except it's a big room and there are quite a few uninvited intruders behaving badly. You'll notice that that guy at the party often doesn't realize that he's out of place. Look through this very thread and you'll spot a few of him, justifying their belligerent behavior and complaining that the rest of us don't get it because this is The Internet and that's how we're supposed to behave.
But we don't behave that way. That's why it's so good here.
I'm sorry but this just doesn't ring true to me. HN is not a uniquely civilized forum, all same rules apply (are you really telling me people aren't trying to look smart around here?), the only difference is that PG founded it based on a set of principles carefully considered to combat the slashdot / digg / reddit culture as the site grew and seeded it with his fan base who naturally appreciate good conversation by definition given PGs essay style.
The problems facing HN today are not due to a few bad apples, to the contrary I think it's pretty clearly a function of size and there may be nothing to do about that short of pulling a Metafilter and charging for new accounts (something which brings its own form of elitism, but may be better than the alternatives).
HN has been often been likened to a mob, but that's not a good analogy either, because I believe 95% of HN is always in full-on critical thinking mode which is the opposite of mob mentality. It just feels like a mob because of the number of criticisms that you can be pelted with based purely on volume, each individual post tends not to be all that harsh, but the wall of text is overwhelming.
I tend to believe the biggest true problem of Hacker News is the nested comments.
Too easy to lose track, too hard to mantain a proper, nice conversation.
It's an amazing community, and we could be exchanging a lot of knowledge and experience, but usually we're just feeling hopelessly lost looking at the 70-something comments, most of them nested in all kinds of crazy levels.
I don't think collapsing comments is the perfect solution, but is better than nothing. I don't have an answer, I don't believe anyone has it ready. If anyone knew how to fix the way we talk to people over the internet, that person would be rich by now.
I agree. I'm often struck by how threads on HN, Reddit and Google+ about some topic go together and pick up on where past threads left off, or duplicate them unnecessarily. (brings to mind that David Byrne line "Say it once, why say it again?")
However, i wish to register the fact that i chuckled on seeing that the response to a comment arguing that shooting down someone's argument is not the HN way was a comment shooting it down!
A cocktail party is filled with smalltalk. I don't want that for HN. I wan't in depth discussion where I can learn something.
Removing all contrary points of view from a discussion makes it one-sided and turns it into smalltalk.
As hackers we should have an open mind and accept that there are opinions contrary to ours. We should embrace this fact and not stamp everyone who doesn't agree with our views as an 'intruder'.
Do a quick scan of the post you're replying to for the words "agree", "disagree", "contrary". You'll notice that the content of the discussion is never mentioned.
It's all about tone. Disagreement is central to conversation. Sadly, it's also central to being a dick, so you have to take care with how you come across. If you think of yourself standing with a beer in your hand looking a group of people in the eye, you'll probably do a lot better here than if you imagine you're on the Official Internet Review Board for Startup Execution pronouncing your verdict.
At no point does the parent advocate for smalltalk on HN or stamping out contrary opinion en bloc. The point is purely about behaviour, respect and being considerate of others.
As someone with a comment history that could be called combative I (unsurprisingly?) disagree.
I'm mostly a lurker. I check HN maybe once a day to see what people are thinking about in web tech / entrepreneurship circles. I comment maybe once a month, which is to say I have to think someone's really missing something important, or feel really strongly that something needs to be considered.
The emergent behavior of this is polarized: either strong arguments or technical corrections. Imagine you're having a loud discussion at a conference, with a stream of developers walking by. Who's going to stop and talk to you? I think it'll mostly be:
1. Someone who hears a rare misconception they've figured out the answer to
2. Someone who hears you're talking about a fringe technology they are also passionate about
3. Someone who wants to sell you something
(depending on who you are: 4. someone who recognizes you, and is excited to meet you in person)
If you're commenting on every article, I can maybe see how it would feel like it's "a few bad apples"... but I encourage you to count the number of people you consider "bad apples" -- they probably outnumber the regular commenters 10:1 or more. I think the "bad apples" are just people who don't usually comment, deciding their perspective on whatever is sufficiently valuable to the community that it's worth their time.
("feels important" is of course != "important" -- #include stories about airbnb screwing up)
Which is to say, when you put something on the HN homepage you're going to learn about: a ton of rare misconceptions you accidentally relied on, and a bunch of fringe technologies you should have been using / should have known exist. I think I can see why that might feel like being under Sauron's gaze... I just don't think it's malicious, and don't think those commenters are doing it wrong.
> If you spend any time on the internet, you're quickly trained that discussion forums are places for combat. The goal is to look as smart as possible while tearing everybody else down. To have an unrefuted comment is to win, and nobody is going to let you do that so they'll tear your comment apart line by line. Naturally, that person is a moron and needs to be told so, preferably by turning his own trick against him and tearing his comment apart.
A cocktail party is full of pretentiousness, and nobody there has anything of value to say. If this is HN, then take me back to the dive bar full of real people thank you...
I have been using a lot of forums and newsboards for more than a decade and only 1 exists today (except for HN) which is still enjoyable for me for exactly that reason you state in your comment.
These places will always be "noisy" but the noise ratio here is rather small. I don't know how HN managed this but I hope it is here to stay.
In my experience so far, posting to HN is more like carving my name on a tree in a mostly uninhabited forest.
My various attempts to post an Ask or Show HN have mostly gone unnoticed. I think it would be great if there were a place that Ask / Show / Tell / etc. posts could get more traction in general.
Check. As a developer and entrepreneur i like seeing new and interesting projects from same-minded people. Most of the articles posted on HN are interesting. But sometimes i just want to see what is created by HN people to test it, support them or to get inspired.
Yeah, I've tried several times to get some feedback from the HN community (most recently for flatnik.com, if you're interested I'd love to hear what you think!).
Simply posting with the "Show HN: " prefix puts you on a couple of twitter feeds/meta-sites. Reddit is normally a better option, because you can post to the niche subreddits and get a bit of interest, even if you don't hit the front page of the whole site (good luck with that, if it's not an image).
> Simply posting with the "Show HN: " prefix puts you on a couple of twitter feeds/meta-sites.
Very true. I announced a new javascript storefront the other month with Show HN. It got four upvotes and 1400 unique visitors in the first few hours, almost all from automatic Show HN aggregators.
Just gave flatnik a spin and the concept looks pretty good.
Might be an idea to add an option to separate out the journeys into bus/tube/OG lines since the TfL Route Planner sometimes give strange routes when all mixed together?
Then exploit this market inefficiency for yourself and fix that.
I try to make it a point to visit the /newest page, and find that I have disproportionate influence on the content of Hacker News as a result. At slow times, it only takes about 3-4 votes in quick succession for a story to crack the top 30 on the front page. If a story is sitting on /newest with 3 votes, you can be the one that starts a voting cascade that brings it to the top. And as an added bonus, if you add an insightful comment, you can rake in hundreds of karma points as your comment is the first thing that thousands of readers see.
The best time to post to Hacker News, on average, is about 8:30 p.m. EST. Comparable times are when the New page's last entry (#30) was submitted over an hour ago.
I was specifically using Jacques Mattheij's Unofficial Hacker News FAQ[1], but I'm aware of other analyses that have been done. 8:30 is what's usually agreed upon by the people who have been around and give an answer to this sort of question, in my experience. Hope that helps.
That account says 7-8 AM EST is the easiest to get on the front page, whereas in the evening will stay on the front page the longest (notably mostly during the middle of the night). (tl;dr 9-10 AM is the overall best)
I wonder if 8:30pm EST correlates to a particular phase in a Hacker's daily cycle? ie it is when the folks is enjoying some downtime by catching up with news on HN, particularly for folks living on US's east coast.
One possible update the HN website is to be able to set the start page when you initial load up the website.
I normally do a quick scan of the front page, and then go the "New" page. I find stories there that are quite interested but failed to show up on front page due to the lack of upvotes.
Yes, I've been there as well. I posted two Show HN without "any trick" or "any attention to details like the best time, best title, or whatever" just to watch my link drops to oblivion. Soon I realize that it would be much harder to get attention, and my just launched Startup would need a lot of SEO, Blog Articles, Build awareness using twitter, facebook, build a amazing land page, etc, etc...Well, I think about that for a while (one week actually) and I ended up deciding that I don't need SO MUCH traction or attention now. I need some clients that I can talk personally and smart enough to help me to evolve the product, and the next day I start to study Erlang (that is amazing btw) and NPL, so I can start to do the cool stuffs that I dream. I will focus in the product only. And if for some merit the product stands out without any "advertisement", so I actually know that I'm building something that people really want.
It's funny. I posted a project once and it got only the upvotes I asked my friends to make, never made it to the front page. Later I removed the first and re-posted it with almost an identical title, just to see. That one got to the top of the front page for hours receiving tons of upvotes and a-lot of great feedback.
My guess is that luck as a great deal to do with it.
I'm glad you came to those conclusion, but know in the future that when you're ready to try and show the community your work again, there are some times when it's a fair bet more than others that you'll get to the front page. Don't let one experience discourage, I would love to give you feedback, I always enjoy doing so on Show HN threads.
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.
Just watching a feel-good cartoon flick with the kids (Ratatouille) and there's this little gem at the end. I'd like to meet the guy who wrote that in. It sums it all up right there.
There is an analogy in there for the people that evaluate other peoples' work in a professional capacity.
I do this for a living, and having been on the creative side I'm always very careful to concentrate on giving positive feedback rather than negative feedback. I notice that lots of times the people in my line of work that have never actually created much can be picked out easily by the way in which they relentlessly try to tear everything down, often quite successfully.
It is almost as if they don't realize that to criticize is 100 times easier than to create and they don't give a rat's ass (pun intended) about the consequences.
HN has a lot of that, de-constructive criticism, just to tear everything down that's new to prove the critic is better than the ones that built whatever it is that is on display. And I think that's where the eye of Mordor reference comes from above, it certainly looks like that at times.
Creation, any kind of creation is hard. And to create something perfect the first time out is impossible. So constructive criticism is worth gold, demotivation is lethal.
I've been a part-time cultural critic for...a long time, and I couldn't agree more. I've always tried to do two things with my essays: make them as creative works in their own right, and always recognize the subordinate nature of criticism. This both makes me sympathetic to the artist (as someone who in a lesser way is presenting a work of my own) and also less prone to taking the all-too-common Superior Stance of the critic.
If a work is particularly bad, I'll generally just leave it alone, unless the artist has presented something that is obviously cynical and pandering, or otherwise obviously derivative and parasitic on the work of better artists. In those cases I might get slightly snarky. I try to control this and tone it down, because even derivative works are risks, and usually somewhat naive.
If the artists' ambitious goals weren't met, and I think I understand them, I try to lay this out in as constructive a manner as I can.
I can usually only accomplish good criticism by immersion -- repeated (dozens of) listens to a record for instance, over a period of days, writing/typing out lyrics by hand, listening to all the artist's previous records, reading as many interviews as I can and just trying to get my head in the "space" of the record. At some point I get to a place of sympathy where I get into the "soul" of the record and I really have something to say, that isn't just a first impression, nor a knee-jerk reaction, but as close to deep understanding as I can get. It's really hard work, even for just a 150 word review (which is one reason I don't do it often any more).
It's rare to get that kind of perspective on a HN comment, "Show HN", or some blog post linked here. But even with the noise that's emerged over the last few years as HN has grown, I can still find the really constructive comments and learn as much as I always have. I just have to look past the frustrating drive-by comments, the throw-away accounts and the axes-to-grind. The signal-to-noise isn't what it used to be, but in general there's just as much signal, but a lot more noise to have to overlook.
Ratatouille was the first Pixar movie I saw that was an utter disappointment (no, I haven't seen them all, but I've seen a fair number of them). It was so far from "feel-good" cartoon flick for me. Much more "I'll never get that two hours of my life back" movie. Not sure how close to two hours it actually was, but it felt like about 10 hours.
Not sure what they were smoking when they made that one. I realize that tastes in movies vary widely, but I still find it hard to believe that people actually like that movie.
That's what made the quote jump out at me. The movie itself was quite unremarkable. Seemed like saturday morning fare writ large to me. I wasn't really paying attention and then I heard that line float by... "Wait. What now?"
Unless you are building something for hackers, HN feedback is generally just noise. You might be able to get some legit usability feedback. But for the most part, you're just going to get a bunch of people fixating on one or two likely irrelevant issues (like what programming language you used, what database, if you are integrated with Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, your choice of font color.) There is a tendency for HN commenters to spout opinions that can be readily rejected with real data, I'm surprised more authors do not present their work with a list of common criticisms and data to counteract them.
Really, the best thing you can get from HN is probably refining your skill at being able to separate useful criticism from non-useful. And a thick skin and confidence in your idea and execution, which is a pre-requisite for being able to digest constructive criticism and perceive who are just being Comic Book Guy haters.
I think we're all in agreeance that trollish snark ("Great, Facebook for [insert subgroup]", "This sucks", etc.) is not helpful (and is almost always downvoted, or at least I'll downvote)
But what about: "Why do I have to login to Facebook to see this?", "There are too many typos for this to be taken seriously?", "The font/colors are really hard to read", "It's broken in Firefox", "Facebook tried this in 2009 and they had [such and such] kinds of problems, what are you doing differently?"
I dunno...Maybe people have different expectations when doing a "Show HN?" If you've worked hard on something, of course you should be encouraged ...but if you're pitching it as a viable startup idea...then you, IMO, shouldn't just want "atta boy/girl" comments...constructive criticism now could save you a lot of pain later on.
I'd say there are probably quite a few people that post to Show HN just for peer validation. Sure the constructive criticism is helpful to improve the project, but comments like:
Change the colors, my eyes are bleeding.
Or:
Ugh, another Bootstrap site?
could be worded in a more positive fashion while still delivering the same content. Even examples like:
Doesn't work in Firefox
aren't useful, because there's no mention of the Firefox version and/or the operating system.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with cynicism. It definitely serves a purpose, as you point out.
The problem I see is that OPs tend to receive a reliable and sustained torrent of cynicism, and little else. Sure, there is value in those comments, and often super enlightening exchanges, but the default attitude of being the smartest-guy-in-the-room can get exhausting and counter-productive. Oftentimes would-be worthwhile discussion get buried or passed up for a bitter exchange with both parties just trying to prove their intellectual worth and cleverness.
If you do something public there are always going to be negative reactions, always. Because it´s socially much much easier to do it online due to anonymity(even when you have a reputation online, you are pretty much anonymous on you normal live) that grants you no social consequences to your rants (such negativity in real live could make your life quite solitary in no time), don´t expect a majority of positive reviews online.
Just in case there is a global fever around you and people is drown to support you no matter what, just then you´ll have lot´s of supporters. But then the critics will be more fierce and personal also.
Just read them and see if there is something worth to be used to improve your idea now or in the future. Ignore the rest as social noise.
Even honest replies that have good intentions have a high probability of adding nothing of valor to the OP. As humans we always try to make people think the same way we do, so even when we know nothing about an issue we are going to give an opinion and try bring people to our side.
It´s not if the opinion is positive or negative that matters (given that it´s not just a rant),you are always going to have more negative opinions of course, but what´s really important is to know if that opinion has any valor and gives you an opportunity to improve.
got some candidates that fit that description? It's easy to tell yourself that the only reason someone's objecting, is because they object to everything.
The fact is, building something is hard. Criticizing something is easy. There's no special skill involved in picking apart somebody's project, making a big deal out of what is otherwise a minor flaw, and using that to dismiss that guy's work. That was a great way to make myself feel better about the fact that someone else built something, and I didn't.
It's blindingly obvious that there is extraordinary negativity on HN.
- I don't think it's fair to call people out publicly (or necessary). Especially as they are unlikely to see my comment and have the opportunity to defend themselves.
A lot of people recently try to enforce some back-patting culture. It's not what drives progress. Deal with it, you're not in pre-school anymore and nobody will give you a medal for participation. If you're unable to handle criticism and take out some value from people's opinions, you'll have a hard time in technology and in business.
Deal with it, you're not in pre-school anymore and nobody will give you a medal for participation. If you're unable to handle criticism and take out some value from people's opinions, you'll have a hard time in technology and in business.
The problem is that people such as yourself make the world a worse place to live in and to experience. There's more to life than technology and business.
HN is a community. It's not about "posting websites" any more than a club is about bbq's. And comments with aggressive overtones, such as yours, make the community worse.
As true as that all may be, there is still no reason to be a dick to people who make "Show HN" posts. One can be critical without being offensive, insulting, rude or belligerent. But too many people seem to think that being obnoxious is The Right Thing To Do for some mysterious reason.
Constructive criticism, preferably actionable feedback, is one thing. Saying "you suck" is quite another.
I'm reminded of an old saying, which goes something like (paraphrasing here): "Everyone has their own battles to fight. Be kind to everyone, for you know not what battle they are fighting".
Besides, it doesn't cost any extra to be polite and reasonable, versus being inflammatory and attacking.
To be honest, this isn't the place to be posting projects if all you want is for people to see what you're doing and you have a fragile ego. The feedback from here is very valuable if you take it objectively.
I feel that if you want to have your ego stroked and have some exposure for your project, the best place to post it would be somewhere like Reddit. If you want to show some good minds in the field and get valuable advice, then post it here.
You are right. When I first joined HN reading comments was my favourite part. I would be in awe of all these intelligent and insightful people, I would often skip entire articles and read the comments first. Things have really taken a major turn for worse in the last 6-8 months. Almost every single thing posted gets picked apart to bits and not in a good way. It has gotten so bad that I have actively started avoiding the comment section. My rule of thumb these days is only read comments in threads below 20 posts as these low comment threads are the ones with the highest chance of reading something interesting rather than just typical tired criticism of the of the article. I don't even consider threads with over 50 comments as these are almost always a complete cesspool of negatively.
Personally, I'd rather have "the eye" than posting something and expecting positive feedback. If I wanted that, I'd ask my mom what she thought. At least here, I know that if I get positive feedback, I'm either doing a really good job, or I'm just really good at riding a fad.
Hahah. classic. Let the comments slamming the guy that comments on negative HN comments begin. I've had a few posts on the front page and have been lambasted each time.
When to my surprise my creation made the front page of HN a couple years ago (and Gizmodo, Crunchgear, Engadget, ...), the second most disappointing thing was that there was no criticism on HN. Has HN become so much more critical since then?
The first most disappointing thing was that I failed to capitalize on the attention to the extent that I had hoped.
I was much more cynical about new technology products before I tried to build and market one myself. That shit is hard, and most of the peanut gallery here one HN has no idea what it takes.
In general, I see a lot of cynicism on HN, but there's more positivity than other sites and overall a super smart audience. For example, you have to wade through a lot of crap to get a good YouTube comment on a high-trafficked video. Here you don't have that problem. You'll get some quick-to-judge comments but you'll also get great feedback (or at the very least, devils advocate type feedback that's worth discussing). Everything: with a grain of salt.
The audience isn't as a whole super smart. Sure there are very smart people that contribute to this community, but unfortunately they're outnumbered significantly by a lot of poorly socialised idiots. One of the recent watershed moments for me was when I think it was PG posted a poll on the user ages, and there was a inordinate amount (obviously false) of very elderly senior citizens using HN. I remember PG remarking upon it.
As someone who goes out of his way to comment on every Show HN thread he sees, I believe most users are not cynical. I can see why most people could be considered harsh; this is why I try to specifically say I'm being constructive.
I think the best way to go about giving feedback is to start with the negatives (the most glaring, preferably) and then end on a positive note with what the developer is doing properly. This tells the creators that they're doing good work and that they shouldn't abandon their babies (yet), they might just need to tweak things here and there.
Conversely, tearing someone to pieces is mean and not productive, even if the points are valid. There are arguments for this that generally go along the lines of some Darwinian thinking where they shouldn't even be trying if they can't take criticism - that's unrealistic and unfair to expect of people. We all need to start somewhere. Help out fellow members.
Hacker News is not a trial by fire - nor is it meant to encourage a death march. Those are two extremes. A comfortable middle ground where both criticism and praise are given is optimum. And I find there is rarely a submission so bad there's nothing good to be said about if at all.
I got more views, comments, and backlash on Reddit than on HN for my project. The HN community is analytical; they will always find a problem with your solution--sometimes people will offer answers and that's where this community shines.
I think the question you have to ask yourself when posting a project to HN is are you ready to receive blunt and sometimes uncivilized responses to your work(?). I think as long as you submit with that filter in full view that even when your work is chided relentlessly for some already obvious gap you can still sort through and determine legitimate criticisms. Say what you will about HN and its strong convictions and shallow snide callouts, but there are not a lot of avenues like it on the internet today for getting actionable feedback.
IMHO you should try your best to ignore what people say unless it's constructive to your work and life. Not everyone will love you and your work and that's okay. Because this is serious business. Stand up for yourself and learn to defend your work, your decisions, and your statements. If they are just trying to get to you identify this and ignore them. But ultimately accept that it's up to you, not them, to change how it all plays out. I know that is probably a tune you've heard before but it's true.
Yea i posted a project on here[1] and got completely ignored, i then posted the same project on /r/gamedev and spent all weekend as the top post with a steady steam of thank you so much this is awesome comments. I really would like the validation of the HN community, but that seems super hard to achieve, if not impossible. Doesnt mean im gonna give up, just gonna keep working hard and hope to get a little lucky.
One should not consider HN votes as a process equivalent to a democratic process where everyone expresses his opinion on the submission. Do not assume lack of interest of HN readers to your submission if it doesn't get to the front page.
To make it less unfair regarding valuable submission, check /news frequently and upvote submission you consider of value.
This is a reflection of humanity as a whole. No matter what you make, no matter how great it is, everyone will try to tear it down and maintain the status quo. It's human nature. The trick is to parse through the criticsm to find what is legit (and make changes accordingly) and what is just complaining and ignore it. Being able to judge feedback like this is an invaluable skill.
The Reddit comments are either positive, or they're skeptical in a way that doesn't try to force their opinion on you. They say things like "Hey, I noticed no one at Soylent seems to have a background in nutrition" rather than "I beg you, don't fund these guys! What they're doing is inherently dangerous." (The latter was actually a very common theme in the comments here about Soylent.)
Reddit != reddit. You are comparing a pretty small focussed subreddit to the front page of HN. Actually there are a few subreddits I'm subscribed to where I expect more insightful comments than on HN.
I cant think of my day started without reading the HN posts, I am so addicted to it because of the articles published here. its like precious to me.
!!!!MY PRECIOUS!!!
Other than this being the internet and developer-brain (read: I-could-have-built-that syndrome), maybe people do it to make up for the fact that you can't downvote
Geezus I was joking to whoever downvoted me. "I SEE YOU" is what Sauron says from "lord of the rings" and the "AND USUALLY IT IS NOT GOOD" was what the HN Sauron would say thank you very much. Damn, I thought everyone had seen LOTR...
There are times when I've taken it upon me to believe that if I post something I've worked on to HN and it doesn't draw any attention (good or bad), that what I'd assumed to be 'important' in the judgement of my 'peers' is actually no. That way, I get myself simple, but effective feedback...
Lots of new users here don't understand that.
If you spend any time on the internet, you're quickly trained that discussion forums are places for combat. The goal is to look as smart as possible while tearing everybody else down. To have an unrefuted comment is to win, and nobody is going to let you do that so they'll tear your comment apart line by line. Naturally, that person is a moron and needs to be told so, preferably by turning his own trick against him and tearing his comment apart. Stop me if this sounds familiar.
That explains why the hardened slashdot veteran gets such a strange reception here. Have you ever been at a party where there was a guy who just didn't belong there? The belligerent know-it-all butting into conversations? The drunk guy in a room full of sober people? The uninvited casual racist? We've all seen what happens. People drift away from him wherever he goes, sometimes stranding some poor soul talking to him, but generally trying as best as possible to continue the party as normal and hoping he doesn't disrupt it further. Nobody wants to confront him and ask him to leave directly, but they all sure hope he'd get the hint on his own.
That's where we are here today. Except it's a big room and there are quite a few uninvited intruders behaving badly. You'll notice that that guy at the party often doesn't realize that he's out of place. Look through this very thread and you'll spot a few of him, justifying their belligerent behavior and complaining that the rest of us don't get it because this is The Internet and that's how we're supposed to behave.
But we don't behave that way. That's why it's so good here.