I launched an idea 75 days ago, here as Show HN. It snowballed into a little community and a game that now sells every day. Maybe not an overnight sensation but the encouragement I found in the community was the motivation that i needed to take it further to a bigger audience.

It was not just a product launch for me. I was, sort-of in a crisis. I had just turned 40 and had dark thoughts about not being young, creative and energetic anymore. The outlook of competing with 20 year old sloptimists in the job market made me really anxious.

Upon seeing people enjoying my little game, even if it's just a few HNers, I found an "I still got it" feeling that pushed me to release on Steam, to good reviews.

It was never about the money, it was about recovering my self confidence. Thank you HN, I will return the favour and be the guy checking the new products you launch. If Show HN is drowning, i will drown with it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137953

▲ vdupras 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

  > sloptimists

That's a good one! Did you just come up with it? I've never seen it before.

	▲	phaser an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		it was in this link included in this same story https://johan.hal.se/wrote/2026/02/03/the-sideprocalypse/
	▲	frizlab an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		18 relevant results in 0.96s, from Kagi.

▲ sph 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Maybe not an overnight sensation but

> It was not just a product launch for me. I was, sort-of in a crisis.

> It was never about the money, it was about recovering my self confidence

If you had included an em-dash in your comment, you could have reached 100% certainty of AI generation.

▲

htnthrow11220 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It’s good to keep your skepticism but at some point you have to be able to recognize normal human usage of these conventions.

And as we all read more AI content and talk to chatbots, that will influence how we do our own writing as well, humans will start to sound more like LLMs.

	▲	phaser 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		yeah! I love the em-dash — they really took it away from us :(

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phaser 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I get that a lot. I’ve wondered why. It’s a bit sad and funny at the same time. I’m not a native english speaker which makes it even more confusing…