I always read the comments. In fact, I don't even read the articles on HN. I just click on the comments.

I read comments on reddit and the *chans and tumblr. The comments is where the magic happens. It's where all of your best planning and PR spit-shine goes to shit and something unexpected occurs.

The problem is that certain Western cultures have raised a generation of people who think they can micromanage every single aspect of the creative process. Just to bridge the gap, imagine everything you, the reader of this comment, might know about science or programming or some arcane field of complex rules. Now imagine the capacity of your mind to have that knowledge. Now imagine a person with the same capacity, but none of your knowledge. What did they fill it up with?

Rules of brush strokes at certain humidity and temperature ranges for a certain chemical for a certain color of red oil, horse racing statistics from 1942, the amount of chocolate per day required to make their loved one's adopted child happy, the number of times a boss taps their pencil on a desk before they reach a conclusion, the amount of paper you have to buy per month to feed your new hobby in origami, the character development of a favorite D&D campaign out of several simultaneous D&D campaigns... the intensity of your capacity for your knowledge is just as equal as the intensity of their knowledge. They come up with their own rules and classifications and means in a way that makes sense to them and their internal consistency. They'll fill that space up with things you'll never know about.

Do you, creator of a product or maintainer of a company, ---REALLY--- think your willpower, mixed with the vast resources of other people's money, can truly steer the flow of this mass web of humanity intensity into an expression you desire? You're pissing in an ocean of piss and there's no splash-guard. You can micromanage your domain as much as you want because you can quantify those risks to some degree of predictability. You can't quantify or control the cacophony of mass human reaction when they are exposed to your presence. If "internet culture" is mean and stupid and evil and racist and sexist, you might as well yell at the sun for being too hot or water for being too wet. There is no "internet culture." There is only a convenient summary of your experiences to justify why the comments are wrong and you are right.

Maybe the problem isn't the comments. Maybe the problem is the expectation that other people should automatically like us, or at the least, be polite. Maybe the problem is that the medium itself makes the expression of intentions via subconscious behavior impossible, so when someone shitposts, you get hurt by it because, to you, you were very clear in your intentions. Maybe the problem is that you're trying to force the internet as a medium of communication instead of as an archive of data preservation and/or a national infrastructure failsafe in case of strategic nuclear targeting to telecommunications facilities. Do you treat your dishwasher like a piano because you love music?

The ancients knew they couldn't control the rivers, but they did know they could capture parts of it at important areas to maximize their desires.