It feels good to be smarter than everyone else. You see your upvotes and that's good enough for an ego boost. Been there, done that.
I wish we were a bit more self-critical about this, but it's a tough problem when what brings the community together in the first place is a sense of superiority: prestigious schools, high salaries, impressive employers, supposedly refined tastes. We're at the top of the world, right?
> prestigious schools, high salaries, impressive employers, supposedly refined tastes. We're at the top of the world, right?
Being pompous and self obsessed requires none of those things.
HN is frequently fodder for satire on other forums. Nobody thinks HN users have "refined tastes", or even that they are "smart" for that matter.