Actually it has a name, "The HN Effect" (inspired by "The Digg Effect", I guess) and it's a real thing as many web sites go down when they are featured in the front page.

Actually it has a name, "Slashdot effect".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

Theres so many local variations. In the german speaking part of the internet, there is the verb "geheist", after a popular tech news site.

Or the Reddit alternative, "The Reddit Hug," which sounds quite heartwarming.

I've always seen it written as "the reddit hug of death". Not quite as heartwarming.

fyi, it used to be the slashdot effect before anything else.

If HN is still running on one server, I don't think that's going to be possible.

There's several hundred thousand computers in the hands of us readers.