OP has certainly nailed Hacker News psychology. My old coworker called the technique "inferiority porn." Titles like "the secretly terrible developer" or the closing statement of this particular article: "Go away from me, I am too far beyond your ability to comprehend."
As many people have pointed out there are faster methods of static hosting through a CDN, and many of the techniques of this site are inapplicable for larger sites. But A+ on the marketing.
IMHO there is mainly one way to get attention - it's to get (great and instant) emotion from the user. You can give good emotions or bad emotions.
Personally, I think, that to create a good emotion takes much more effort than to create a bad one. The website/product can say how great am I, but it will not 'click' as instantly as someone telling me I am a dumb baby and I suck [0][1] or I am not superior mere mortal baboon [2], for which most people will get instant rage and will start flame wars in whatever comment section, as there "is no such thing as bad PR".
Most popular writer/bloggers in my country have created these dipshit arogant characters (I tend to believe that they are "normal" people, but they clearly know what sells) who always say that they are richer, smarter and better than you. They create stories about "cheap restaurant breakfast for 60€" and so on, though the most interesting thing is that people buy their shit and then rage on whatever websites about how dared the writer call them a dumbass homeless bum.
I probably sound like I'm tooting my own horn but it definitely felt really contrived to me. I upvoted it because of the comments containing better tips or caveats provided for the good ones.
I'd say that the general idea of watching out for external and/or bloated resources is absolutely applicable for larger sites. Media sites are particularly egregious: not only does the js take the lion's share of what's transferred, rendering of the content I'm interested in typically blocks until everything is downloaded and processed.
As many people have pointed out there are faster methods of static hosting through a CDN, and many of the techniques of this site are inapplicable for larger sites. But A+ on the marketing.