On some level I agree with you that a lot of the anger we see is expressed towards empty signifiers.

However honestly I think you could mark these changes that we see in the tenor of discussions on HN around how active Musk himself has been at doing things that many of us don't like.

It's one thing to not like him because I am generally anti-capitalist and I'm super skeptical about the actual goodness of his products or see his companies as mere plays to get listed in the S&P500. I never have expected folks on a venture capitalist form to find that position intelligible.

It's another thing when he does a bunch of political things that large sections of folks here actively don't like. A lot of the folks here like the US for its humanistic, empathetic, and liberalized culture.

My point (and I have one, so you don't think I am merely being spiteful) is this:

the actual content and degree of that dislike might be important to register and dismissing it as simple spite might miss an important point.

In 2012 many tech companies might look quite benign to many people, whereas after the acquisition of Twitter, the ketimine-fueled ideological tweeting, the attempts to influence US politics, and the fallout from DOGE might seem to many people worth some actual outrage.

And further, that ourtage might seep into all the other ways we describe other technologies: Flock certainly doesn't seem benevolent, ICE->Trump->Vance->Thiel/Palentir might seem pressing, and LLMs might seem less like a really solid autocomplete and more like a way to automate mass surveillence.

So my point is that while it might be tempting to dismiss the anger that people feel as simple social media toxicity and irrational gestures towards strawmen, if we accept that people have legitimaet grievances behind their anger then that metric might stand in for real changes in the ways that the discussions around tech increasingly feel political in very direct and material ways.

Understanding that shift has been one of the more useful things that I've gotten from reading comments here.