
Hacker News Parody Thread - B-Con
http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/
======
Xcelerate
I disagree with the author. This isn't exactly a parody thread. A parody is
"an imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialise an original work"
[1]. For one thing, I would hardly call Hacker News comments "original work",
and a simple creation like this hardly captures the full scope and breadth of
comments on here.

Furthermore, I'm not really sure why this belongs on HN, because it's not very
technical, and frankly, not very intellectually stimulating. People on here
don't appreciate humor, so those who upvoted this should have known better.
I've flagged the article.

Also, I've never even heard of Brad Conte.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody>

~~~
baby
No, OP is correct.

* You omitted that HN is also a place to talk meta.

* You misunderstand that a parody is not supposed to capture the full scope of something.

* It was funny to read, that's all that matters.

~~~
mixedbit
Who's the OP and why do we care about his opinion?

~~~
sageikosa
How could you not know the OP?

~~~
ianstallings
I want to talk about JIT.

------
simonsarris
Good god this was funny, right down to the usernames.

But now its time to be very HN about it.

> Rats, top comments will be impossible to beat.

Actually I think I have a solution to this, though its just guesswork.

I'm not particularly well known here (or anywhere), but either people actually
like the words I say, or I simply have yet to make a complete ass out of
myself. (I think one of these is more plausible, but who is to say.)

My average karma on HN is 20.59, which _seems_ to be a lot. Specifically, on
the Leaderboard[1] that puts me in fourth place among the HN big names for
average karma (though I have nowhere near the _total_ karma to appear there).

I've noticed that when I reply to a post, even if there's already 30 comments,
my post usually ends up at the top. And it stays there, even if no one
replies, and even if I don't get many or any upvotes for it, for a few hours
sometimes.

Alas I don't know for certain, but my guess is that if you have a high average
karma then your posts are automatically weighted higher, so you can inject
your opinion into almost any topic at any time. This affords me the luxury of
being a contradictory whine even if I come late to the party!

Can anyone confirm or deny my suspicion here?

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders>

~~~
chimeracoder
> Alas I don't know for certain, but my guess is that if you have a high
> average karma then your posts are automatically weighted higher, so you can
> inject your opinion into almost any topic at any time. This affords me the
> luxury of being a contradictory whine even if I come late to the party!

One thing I dislike about the 'average karma' is that it discourages engaging
in an extended discussion. For example, if you reply to this post, you may get
a number of upvotes, but probably not as many as your original post. This
creates an incentive just to ignore replies (when possible) so as not to bring
down your average comment score.

~~~
johnernaut
It matters in high performance Python.

~~~
kmfrk
Just sort the comments randomly, as long as their karma is >=0, and place the
negative-karma comments at the bottom.

Done. :P

This algorithmic craze is too clever for its own good. It is particularly
evident in the false-positive bans.

(And I swear, it's scary how HN joke comments are indistinguishable from the
real ones.)

~~~
vukmir
>This algorithmic craze is too clever for its own good. It is particularly
evident in the false-positive bans.

Source?

~~~
D_Alex
OMG dude google it!

[http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&output=search&sclien...](http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-
ab&q=This+algorithmic+craze+is+too+clever+for+its+own+good.+It+is+particularly+evident+in+the+false-
positive+bans&oq=This+algorithmic+craze+is+too+clever+for+its+own+good.+It+is+particularly+evident+in+the+false-
positive+bans&gs_l=hp.3...11809.11809.0.13011.1.1.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.1...1c.1.5.psy-
ab.Q1eKIJd8-Vs&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43287494,d.dGY&fp=7f557d56038fe934&biw=1600&bih=759)

Edit: Why am I being downvoted????

------
Cushman
The parody is funny. The comments here are _hilarious_. I fear I will never
again be able to tell if an HN commenter is just jerking my chain, no matter
how sincere they seem.

~~~
kmfrk
Poe's Law.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law>

/s ... or is it?

~~~
minopret
Cole's law.

(is mostly shredded cabbage)

------
swanson
Black text on a grey background? How can anyone expect to read this? We don't
all have retina displays and use OSX.

<http://contrastrebellion.com/>

~~~
jiggy2011
I have a Macbook 15-inch 2.7GHz with Retina display, it baffles me that it is
2013 and there are _still_ people who don't have one yet.

I mainly do my programming by SSHing to it and using Vim on my ipad.

~~~
alttab
> I mainly do my programming by SSHing to it and using Vim on my ipad.

I've both actually done this, and told people about it on HN. I'm ashamed.

~~~
jiggy2011
want my dotfiles? I added a cool hack that lets you do hjkl by rubbing your
penis on the ipad screen. You have to map it with your DNA though.

~~~
commanda
See, dotfiles like yours are why there's not more women in technology. As a
feminist, I demand that your dotfiles be made inclusive by also accepting
input from boobs.

Also, who uses h and l anymore? It's 2013, you should be using w and b.

~~~
jiggy2011
It's open source, fucking do it yourself.

------
leeoniya
"Rats, top comments will be impossible to beat. I can probably piggy-back off
a top comment, though, those comment threads aren't long yet..."

actually, this text in the reply box highlights a huge problem with threaded
(and voted) discussions in general: there is little incentive to reply to any
already-huge thread, even with valuable content.

i've been thinking of how to solve this issue for the past week and have some
ideas, working on a prototype.

~~~
friendly_chap
I generally agree, however, your comment would be more valuable if you would
include verifiable information instead of anecdotes and personal opinion, and
you would actually analyse the problem instead of throwing around vague
criticism.

My take on the subject is:

This effect can be mostly attributed to the fact that a top comment means more
exposure, and given that the upvotes outweight the downvotes on the response
(which is true, since that's why it is at the top), by deductive reasoning we
arrive to the obvious conclusion that more exposure will further cement the
position of a given post.

Also we must not forget about the effect of peer pressure[1]

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_pressure>

For those with a lack of humour, I include a smiley here: :-)

~~~
yaddayadda
Obligatory xkcd comic related to peer pressure - <http://xkcd.com/1170/>

------
vectorpush
The usernames made me chuckle, my favorite is "DefaultSearchIsWikipedia".

Also, you forgot at least one archetype: the enthusiastic rant from an
oblivious hell-banned poster.

~~~
orangethirty
vectorpush - you have been banned. No one can see your comment.

;)

~~~
scoot
Samuel_Michon, I can't reply to your comment directly, but just to let you
know, you're hell-banned, and no-one can read your comment.

------
jjcm
I think a parody of something is one of the best ways to draw insight, and in
my opinion I'm kinda happy that this is what the parody of HN is: links to
wikipedia/cited sources, debates about whether or not an article was correct,
nitpicks and views from different positions/experiences, and the off hand XKCD
comic.

Probably much more civil than a parody of a slashdot/reddit/4chan post would
be.

~~~
pekk
Let's not be too self-congratulatory. Hacker News today is in many ways like
reddit of a few years ago, and Slashdot of many years ago. And this is a
somewhat bowdlerized parody anyway.

~~~
jjcm
I think all social news networks will degrade over time, but it's still good
to have these health checks every once in a while to see what the state of it
currently is. It lets us know when we need to move on.

------
ComputerGuru
At the risk of a) being wrong and b) breaking the 4th wall by not conforming
to said stereotype, looks like both my username and my tendency to ramble just
within the limits of OT have been parodied there.... Oh well, if that's
actually the case, then I'm honored :)

EDIT: btw, hate my username and emailed PG to get it changed; he said it's not
currently possible in the code. Wouldn't want him poking around the DB for me!
Made my username back when HN first started as an anonymous account, but kept
using it thereafter... CamelCase usernames suck!

~~~
epochwolf
Yeah. My freenode account is EpochWolf and it mocks me every time I log in. :(

------
joshrotenberg
I read the first few responses but when I finally searched for "haskell" and
nothing came up I got bored and moved on.

------
ot
Relevant XKCD: <http://xkcd.com/386/>

~~~
sea6ear
Possible meme starter? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhrz1-4hN4>

------
jacobwg
Nice - thanks for sharing!

There's surprising amount of hidden jokes in there too - feel free to read the
OP's blog post [1] for many of the details (assuming you like spoilers)!

[1] <http://bradconte.com/hacker-news-parody-thread.html>

------
B-Con
OP here: Thanks for the positive response, HN. The comments here are
_hilarious_. Way to embrace the spirit. :-)

Just in case it wasn't noticed by many, note that _all_ the links on the page
are mini-jokes as well. Replies, navigation, everything.

~~~
minikomi
How about if you mouse over the upvote button the down vote button jumps up
under your cursor!

------
baak
"Who's the OP" was pretty funny. Honestly, the hacker-hero worship on HN gets
a little ridiculous sometimes.

------
minimaxir
I have a related question: what is HN's stance on parody?

I've seen many parodies posted to HN that have been flagged to hell because
some don't notice that it's a parody. (excellent example:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5126318>) I also have my own parodies
that I've stopped posting because they've met the same fate.

------
raganwald
Is the a kick starter for HN parodies as hardware? I would sponsor that.

------
d0mine
As Russian poet said to describe his portrait:

    
    
      Себя как в зеркале я вижу,
      Но это зеркало мне льстит.
    

A. Pushkin

Translation:

    
    
      I see myself as in a mirror 
      But this mirror flatters me.

------
nirvanatikku
A good laugh -- it's all in the details; and surprisingly plausible

~~~
darxius
The point of the article was to focus on the predictability of the HN user
base as a whole, not that it would be a plausible outcome.

You obviously misinterpreted the author's intentions and you missed:

* The fact that it wasn't made to make you laugh

* Why do we laugh, what makes things funny?

* What is laughter, really?

(tongue in cheek, of course)

~~~
amalakar
If you want to know more about laughter here is the wikipedia article[1]. Also
HowStuffWorks explains how laughter works[2].

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter>

[2]: <http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/laughter.htm>

------
pixelcort
Forgot an "Edit: Why am I being downvoted?" comment.

------
michielvoo
Hands up if you felt the need to actually reply to some of the comments.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I've upvoted more than 10 comments on that thread, fully knowing nothing will
happen.

------
awestley
I disagree with the author. I know he's incredibly successful and right about
pretty much everything he's ever said, but I've had some experience in this
area and just finished reading through some of the archives and I think his
focus is wrong. I'm going to ignore the technical issue and talk about the
bigger picture and higher level things than what was said in the blog post. If
the OP thinks that the process is most important, it's really about end
results. But if he thinks it should be about the end results then he's an
idiot for not thinking about the process. I'll weasel in a reference the
startup I co-founded even though it's not directly relevant.

------
duck
The one thing this is missing is someone using or accusing someone of a straw
man:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=straw&s...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=straw&start=0)

------
ognyankulev
I've finally seen how downvotability looks like in HN UI :-)

------
TallboyOne
I also like how the user "redditor" is highlighted in subtle green.

~~~
B-Con
New users have that highlighting. Poor guy is apparently still adjusting to
the comment culture.

~~~
d23
Oops, you said something wrong? Shadowbanned!

------
Apocryphon
As a Node guy, does this really matter for 95% of the world?

------
mdanger
Check where the reply links point to for some extra fun.

------
mindcrime
I wish we had more of this kind of content on HN.

------
y0ghur7_xxx
I find it a bit creepy that I got all the jokes.

------
joshaidan
I'm tempting to make a version of this that will take a URL and automatically
generate comments that follow this model.

------
munchor
Is it possible to downvote people? Why can't I do that?

~~~
lancefisher
I just learned from the post you need 500 karma. I'm only 2 away!

~~~
B-Con
Couldn't resist. Happy 500. :-)

~~~
lancefisher
Ha ha! Thanks! I have exactly 500 now. Maybe I should change my handle to
icandownvote.

Edit: Maybe it takes more than 500, or some time. I don't have down arrows
yet.

~~~
B-Con
It got mine relatively recently. I remember it took about 15 minutes after I
reached 500. Either the system takes a little while to recognize the change,
or I reached 501 in that time.

Note that you can't vote on comments over 24 hours old or replies to yourself,
so don't use those to check your ability.

~~~
lancefisher
I just got downvote power!

------
ChuckMcM
I like how this article has 460 upvotes, is only 5 hrs old, and isn't in the
top spot :-)

That said it reminds me of the 'every oscar winning movie' video on Youtube
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhrz1-4hN4>

------
pettazz
I have stuff to say about JIT.

~~~
daeken
That statement truly sums up 99% of compiler discussions on the web.

------
rapind
I know this is off-topic, but does anyone know how he put this together?

~~~
B-Con
Just in case you're serious: I wrote the replies out in a simple indentation
format. Then when I had convinced myself I had some legitimate humor material
I saved an HN page, looked at the internal layout structure (and lost a few IQ
points in the process), and found an easy way to copy blocks of markup to
create comments. Then I did a ton of link replacing and modifying for each
comment, to give them unique IDs for voting, make username URLs match up, etc.
(Note the ID numbers are all prime.)

If you view the source, it's obvious how it's cobbled together.

Interestingly, writing the first 90% of the comment content only took about
10% of the total time. Refining it and adding the rest took the other 90%.

~~~
rapind
Seems like a typical idea v.s. execution case. I found it funny. Thanks for
taking the time.

------
kyro
I wish Stripe would come to Denmark.

~~~
mturmon
Hey, nice to see another Dane on HN. Care to meet up for a beer sometime?

I'm based in Malmo. The scene here isn't as big as in the Valley, but I look
at that as an advantage, because it's easier to get traction locally and then
expand.

------
3rd3
Nice article.

~~~
benatkin
I see what you did there.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
TIL HN has a thread where redditors are safe from downvotes.

------
deeqkah
The first thing i did when i opened your link knowing it was a parody was to
check how many responses _to the article_ there were. And there were too many.
Way too many.

Comments on Hacker News more often than not go into the meta almost
immediately, and constantly, so there's usually one comment with well over
half of the op's responses nested under it. I use a userscript for HN for this
exact reason.

It's upsetting, to be honest.

------
madsushi
The URLs for the menu links at the top were spot-on.

------
bobwise
Got distracted halfway through the thread, came back 10 minutes later, and
read another 3 comments before I remembered it was a parody.

------
MaysonL
The funniest thing about this parody (to me, at least) was that so many of the
made up names were actual HN usernames...

------
hackinghabits
Someone just get me off from a -1 karma!

------
RivieraKid
Honestly, I find the culture of "top comment contradicts the OP" a bit weird
and unauthentic in a sense.

------
andersnolsen
The author couldn't be more wrong. Eating animals is always wrong. Would you
eat your own dog? Or little brother? They are made of meat as well. I wouldn't
eat my own dog and my little brother, well, if he was a gingerbread boy maybe.

------
JoshTriplett
I love the snarky comments in the reply URLs, too; I missed them on the first
pass.

------
hkmurakami
I'm always saddened when the "guru3" type post is found in the middle of the
pack.

~~~
chimeracoder
What do you mean? tokenadult is ALWAYS at the top! ;)

------
DeepAndDark
"I hate to be the person to point out": The brain-washers offer to help
explaining that only when you realize where you have gone wrong can you end
the self-loathing you are now experiencing.

------
IgorPartola
As a Python guy, does this really matter for 95% of the world?

------
kickingvegas
Missing a comment on how much the commenter hates Unity.

------
mikeevans
Even nailed the search, if you didn't catch that.

------
lignuist
Why is this on HN?

------
hcarvalhoalves
Golden that this thread reflects the OP exactly.

------
sampsonjs
This also needs "our slashdot clone of super geniuses is being ruined by
comments such as this" pearl clutching from the admin.

------
TallboyOne
I love what happens when you search. Lol.

------
logn
I have no idea whether to take any comments here as serious or continuing the
parody :)

------
wam
This has nothing to do with parodies or hacker news threads. What's the point?

------
spoiler
Where am I? Someone point me in the direction of Google.

------
donohoe
Links are broken. Can't reply on any threads. DAY RUINED

------
rayiner
The only funny part was the Randell Munroe cameo.

------
azinman2
I don't get it and therefore it's bad.

------
shokwave
The search function joke got me good.

------
skeletonjelly
pg is not top comment.

~~~
ndesaulniers
Did you actually read the article?

