Well, yes, this is what makes HN and sites like it work for the target audience: they both passively - by endlessly discussing a group of topics which is of interest to a relatively narrow group of people - as well as actively - by vociferous use of the down-vote button on those who venture too far outside of the desired discourse - shun those who do not fit in. If you do fit in you'll see this as a positive, if the topics discussed here are of no interest to you you won't care at all since you prefer to be somewhere else. It is only for those who straddle the edges of the evolved site profile who will think negatively of this since they want the site to accommodate them as well. Some (myself included) are fine with the subject matter discussed here since they can simply ignore those things which they're not interested in but would like the down-vote to disagree rule to disappear so that legitimate comments which don't fit the desired narrative do not get greyed out into oblivion. Others (like you?) would prefer a less hype-oriented subject matter discussion.