One problem with cute animal pictures is that they appeal to almost everyone, including people who are incapable, for whatever reason, of posting well-reasoned, interesting, respectful comments. The fact that HN is a little dry makes it less appealing to dumbasses.

At any rate, it's too late. The era of organic 'cute animal' content on the internet is dead. AI slop has killed it.

(I was replying to a now deleted response)

> Slop has an upside?

Not exactly. Rather its is that places where one does want to find pictures of people's cute cats and dogs is now having additional moderation / administration burdens to try to keep the AI generated content out of those places.

It's not a "cute pictures of cats overrunning some place" but rather "even in the places where it was appropriate to post pictures of one's pets in #mypets or /r/cuteCatPics because such pictures are appropriate there (so they don't overrun other places), now people are starting fights over AI generated content."

An example that I recently encountered was someone who did an AI replacement of a cat that was "loafing" of a loaf of bread that looked like a cat. The cat picture would have been fine (with a dozen "aww" and "cute" comments in reply)... the AI cat loaf picture required moderation actions and some comment defusing over the use of AI.