I think someone going from normal smell ability to no smell ability might feel differently. One of the top joys in my life is eating and a large portion of that experience is smell. Take it away and I'd expect to lose a lot of what I enjoy. Not just as I eat it but even before, the smells of prep. Smelling garlic being fried or the stink of shrimp paste knowing delicious things are arriving soon. The smell of baking bread that makes my mouth water. Etc....
Another example which might seem the opposite for most. I don't personally understand the appeal of stinky tofu (yet). (all over China but most of my experience with it were Taiwan). To me it tastes like a savory tofu dish where someone set a bowl of steaming hot feces on plate next to you while I you eat. In other words, to me, nothing is added by the smell. Take it away and it would be a standard savory tofu dish. But, all of my Taiwanese friends crave this stuff and I think the smell is part of it.
I've known plenty of people like that where is was an issue. The parents can't rely on neighbors because they can't communicate. Don't have as many friends. Have trouble at local stores, doctors, agencies, etc...
These are not self promotional titles. The subjects are the exploration and the software respectively.
* "Show HN: I built a non-linear UI for ChatGPT"
* "Show HN: I created 3,800+ Open Source React Icons"
These are self promotional titles. The subject of each is "I"
My own simple check just via algolia search results checking for titles that start with "Show HN: I" gave these results for years starting April 1st. Graphed divided by the total number of results for that year
I feel like maybe I grew up in a time when generally, self promotion was considered a bad character trait. Your actions are supposed to be what promotes you, calling attention to them is not but I feel that culture is changing.
I wonder if the rise in self promotion (assuming there is a rise) has to do with social media etc...
I perceive a similar rise on Youtube but I have no data, just a feeling from the number of youtube recommendations for videos of "I....."
Your definition of self promotion is a bit different from what I usually think. I usually consider self promotion to be someone promoting something that that same person did. Both of your non-self-promotion examples would be self promotion under my definition.
So what you consider to be self promotion vs non-self-promotion, I consider to be self promotion with a title that very clearly indicates that vs self promotion with a title that less clearly indicates that. However, the "Show HN" phrase is only used for self promotion I think, so even without the "I", anyone familiar with the convention will know it's self promotion.
> However, the "Show HN" phrase is only used for self promotion I think, so even without the "I", anyone familiar with the convention will know it's self promotion.
I think that's an extremely cynical view though a common one. I've never thought of "Show HN" as self promotion if it doesn't include "I" unless I go through to the actual product/library/post and find it full of self promotion. I agree with you that a post that doesn't include "I" can be self promotion but I don't think it always is even if the person made/worked on it.
"Show HN: XYZ and LLM library in rust" to me is informational. It's point is, more often than not, to inform people of something they might get use out of. I know that's true when I've posted something like that. It's meaning is "here's a useful resource that was just created". Sure I get pleasure from knowing I helped people with something but I'm not trying to promote myself, I'm trying to promote the library/post/info.
"Show HN: I made an LLM Library in rust" to me is self promotional. It might be useful to others but it's intent was clearly self promotion given the subject is "I", not the library/post/product.
Interestingly, the special rules are more in favor of the more "self-promotionals" variants
> On topic: things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands. For hardware, you can post a video or detailed article. For books, a sample chapter is ok.
> Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.
Show HN is defined in the rules (as the sibling comment quotes) as something someone made to be shared, ie self promotion, regardless of whether they used "I" in the title. Your definition seems more arbitrary than what Hacker News itself intends.
This is talked about a lot in Einstein's Walter Isaacson biography, so people have been observing this trend for a long time (e.g the Germans accusing Einstein of doing self promotion, the US having celebrity culture in contrast), maybe it's cyclical
What is it with "I made a _______" posts? Those seem new to me and very braggy. I see them on youtube as well. I feel like if I could check all the posts to HN I'd find a trend of instead of just "Show HN: A tool/app/site to do X" there's a tread of adding "I made" in front. Is that a result of social media conditioning, that you must brag that "I" made?
I can't speak for youtube given that I don't really actively browse it, but I'm not sure how it's "braggy" when the entire purpose of "Show HN" is to demo things that were made by the person posting it (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html):
> Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with.
At most, it's redundant, but not in a way that hurts anyone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1381172 is the oldest one I could find via the algolia search at the bottom of the page, from 2010, so it's not that recent a phenomenon. A different reading is less that the emphasis is on I made a thing, and more about being a complete sentence with an explicit subject vs implicit.
I don't have a problem with people bragging about a thing they made. I think if someone spent a bunch of time on a thing, I'll give them time to be proud of the work they did and give them space to show off.
if it's something I'm interested in. The difference between "ShowHN: I built a thing", and "ShowHN: thing" seems inconsequential to me.
But you know that one about how naming things is an unsolved problem in computer science? Looking at random search results, I think it's more about it being a more natural way to describe something. "Show HN: I built a thing that does blah", rather than "Show HN: Foobar, a thing that does blah".
If I do "Show hn: George", what's George? vs "Show HN: I made a thing that does foo called George"
Interestingly enough, there are only 805 results for "Show HN: We" vs 5,060 results for "Show HN: I", What a bunch of loners we are.
I see "I made X that does Y" as self promotion. You're not prmmoting X, your prmoting the fact that "I" made it. You're smart. People should take you seriously. They should offer you jobs and/or praise. Of course you're secondarily promoting X but only in the cause of promoting yourself
I see "X, an app that does Y" as promoting X and sayuhg "reader, you might find X useful if you want to do Y"
The purpose of the posts are entirely different.
Your observation on "We" is interesting though I suspect that teams are more likely to write "X, and app that does Y" because "We made X" doesn't achieve the self promotion goals in the same way as "I made X"
Another question is, why do you have such a problem with people promoting themselves? On the Internet, no one knows who your sockpuppet is. So if you come across a post that says look at this cool thing I found on the Internet, and you feel one way about it, vs someone says look at this cool thing I made, vs I'm cool, look at this thing I made, and then you feel a third way about the exact same thing.
Another example which might seem the opposite for most. I don't personally understand the appeal of stinky tofu (yet). (all over China but most of my experience with it were Taiwan). To me it tastes like a savory tofu dish where someone set a bowl of steaming hot feces on plate next to you while I you eat. In other words, to me, nothing is added by the smell. Take it away and it would be a standard savory tofu dish. But, all of my Taiwanese friends crave this stuff and I think the smell is part of it.