It’s called bikeshedding and yes it’s a cultural thing on HN. [1]

Most people here are big company worker bees where they take zero risks and do very little of substance.

In these organizations, it’s common for large groups of people to get together in “meetings” and endlessly nitpick surface-level details of unimportant things while completely missing the big picture because it’s far too complex to allow for easy opinions or smart-sounding critique.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality