>StackOverflow was a pub where programmers had fun while learning programming. The product of that fun was valuable.

I really like this description. I and others here who are talking about negative experiences there seem to decry how we enjoy programming (you see words like "fun" and "passion" used in these posts), and how SO decided to take this good faith and cheer and bludgeon users for often opaque reasons, just so they could power trip. As much as I have many reservations about LLMs, I can ask LLMs to be as emotionless (or even emotional but chipper/happy) as I want. On SO, you needed to prostrate yourself and self-criticize to even have the opportunity to be bludgeoned further by the moderators. Who tf would want to spend their time contributing there? Even if you contributed a decent or even great amount to the site, you would still get whacked over the head if you dared to ask a question of your own.

This is why people jumped to LLMs, even when they were far less capable than they are now. Most people (SO moderators don't view others as "people", as is apparent in this thread) would rather receive mid-tier answers from an LLM (though LLMs have now exceeded this level of quality) while still having fun, than get castigated and "closed as duped" on SO.