> All of that social activity with zero ROI. At first, I thought that I needed to change my commenting habits, and, you know, try to make connections. But the more I considered how to make friends in comment culture, the more I realized that it wasn’t just my own social ineptitude. Comment culture has a problem. Systemically, it produces an internet of strangers.

I can't tell if Hacker News is less affected by this, or if it lends itself to parasocial relationships, but I've started to recognize a few other users who seem to frequently read and comment on the same topics that I do.

I don't think these will blossom into friendships, but many friendships of mine have started with frequenting the same location or event until you see who else is usually there, and then introducing yourself.

If this kind of comment-acquaintance is common on HN though, it probably comes back (as always) to the self-selecting user base, the text-only interface, and of course, the moderation. Because I certainly haven't experienced it on Reddit, Twitter, or Meta platforms.