HN was also this. I think you, and a lot of people, probably hold HN in some weird kind of high regard. HN is just another anonymous forum frequented mostly by techies.
Also being a constant contrarian is a special flavour here.
Yeah this is true. Probably the level of discourse was never really that good, especially for non-technical threads. I suppose it’s just become more apparent to me.
It's still better here than most other pseudonymous public forums, with the exception of carefully curated feeds (and such curation has a fairly high opportunity cost and difficulty)
Also being a constant contrarian is a special flavour here.