But even more interestingly, there's a way to social engineer yourself into the in-crowd. Open their profiles in separate tabs, click on "comments" and "submissions", and bookmark the lot of them. Instead of reading the Hacker News main page, open the tab group and read their comments and submissions. Agree with them for the most part, and take their side in arguments. Not 100%, or you'll come off like a sycophant. You're not looking for karma - submissions are much better for that - you're looking for acceptance by that group. When people call you by your first name, you've won.
I'm not advocating this, but I think it's interesting that it can be done.
:-) Though I have very serious doubts that would really work, at least not without having sufficient technical knowledge and intelligence to genuinely engage them in discourse. In which case you could join the in crowd on actual merit -- and probably would far prefer that method, for a variety of reasons. Some social circles you really can't fake your way into. This is probably one of them.
I think this is a very interesting observation. One possible way to find this club might be to look at tptacek's profile:
"Must-read list: 'patio11, 'gruseom, 'anigbrowl, 'mechanical_fish, 'carbocation, 'potatolicious, 'grellas, 'dctoedt, 'yummyfajitas, 'tzs, 'rayiner, 'rprasad. Yeah, yeah yeah, 'pg too."
But even more interestingly, there's a way to social engineer yourself into the in-crowd. Open their profiles in separate tabs, click on "comments" and "submissions", and bookmark the lot of them. Instead of reading the Hacker News main page, open the tab group and read their comments and submissions. Agree with them for the most part, and take their side in arguments. Not 100%, or you'll come off like a sycophant. You're not looking for karma - submissions are much better for that - you're looking for acceptance by that group. When people call you by your first name, you've won.
I'm not advocating this, but I think it's interesting that it can be done.