Comment by sebastiennight
17 hours ago
I would have said the opposite: I'd assume the link to be to a blog post, or Wikipedia page, that articulates the idea in a clearer more succint way than the person might be able of.
This is, of course, before people started sending Instagram Reel or YouTube Short links. Or, maybe worse, links to 3-hour-long YouTube podcasts.
> I'd assume the link to be to a blog post, or Wikipedia page, that articulates the idea in a clearer more succint way than the person might be able of.
As with everything, it depends on who is sending it. For some people, yes. For the rest (majority), it's a case of
He: Makes some claim
Me: I question some aspect of it.
... Potential back and forth
He: Oh, just look at this video/article/book that explains and answers all your concerns.
Thing is, in the majority of the cases, it didn't address my concern. I'd write up something in detail, and get back either silence or yet another link. Took way too long for me to realize I shouldn't bother clicking the link to begin with.
You are just collateral damage.
Too many people put up a lazy comment when it is clear they haven't thought about $it, googled $it, or asked AI about $it. Where $it == {whatever they are unsure about or arguing about}.
The lazy commenter desires a human to waste their time writing a response. Often others judge that the commenter doesn't deserve the time or effort, so instead of a thoughtful response others often just reply with a relevant link - giving the commenter a chance to learn or reply.
Unfortunately offhand responses like LMGTFY become a common behaviour in forums, even when wildly inappropriate (as you note).
When it happens to you, it isn't personal, you are just a victim because everyone has been trained to a pattern of behaviour by thoughtless commenters.
It is also likely your comments get pattern matched as not worthwhile reasoning clearly to. You can do something to change your writing to avoid appearing waffly/bullshitty/unworthy (or whatever the reason responders are not replying to the meat of your point). Here's where I've done that pattern match in the past although usually spent time writing reply too: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by%3Arobocat%20duckduckgo&sort...
See also: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19665/the-help-vamp...
Sorry in advance if I've misunderstood your point or if I'm being Captain Obvious.
You're totally on point, but I do think you're missing my wider point:
People replying with LLM responses is not really functionally different from lazily responding with a link. If the OP is astounded that LLM responses are tolerated, where was he all those years when people were lazily responding with links?
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Eh, but it can become just as low-effort as AI slop. I've participated in a number of conversations here where it appears the person I was interacting with (this was pre-AI) was just googling off some keywords and pasting links with one or two sentences attached. Even in cases where they legitimately read the thing they posted, the static nature of the link leaves no room for actually responding to any nuance I might have added (i.e. the author missed something critical).
After a few years of this I also just stopped clicking thinks and refused to engage in conversations that seemed to be going that direction.
Yes - I would think this is obvious to HN commenters. Generally, when someone leaves a comment on HN that is nothing but a link, it gets downvoted.