That's just human culture, or more accurately, human nature. If you gather a bunch of anonymous strangers online in one place and let them run free, they'll likely make a mess of things.
Perhaps it's an unpopular opinion here, but I think that HN culture for example is horrendous.
Whereas millions of people participate in online forums every single day, and not because they're desperate, in danger of death or the like.
Why are you here there?
Seriously curious. Promise not to criticize you or even respond to what you say.
I agree with, uh, assbuttbuttass: "there are still a lot of interesting articles posted here".
As for commenting, it's just a matter of too much time on my hands, temptation, and bad habit.
> Promise not to criticize you or even respond to what you say.
You can respond, anyway. ;-)
Well, since you asked ;-)
I'd agree with you, more or less. I don't find it horrendous necessarily. But I find the focus to be far more on the articles than the conversation. Most of my comments are just me screaming into the void.
Its a different business model though, HN isn't trying to increase your session time as much as possible. I find the UI to actually discourage conversation and interaction.
The culture is fucking terrible