I am a Show HN expert. You need to just keep trying until you get traction. Sometimes it's title. Sometimes it's timing. Sometimes it's more substantial - a chance to rethink, redo, rebrand, rewrite, etc.
Also, mods can help. They are friendly and generous. Reach out to them via email and ask them about your post. Often they have something to say and it's useful.
The challenge you encountered is nothing to do with the recent spike. I've been doing Show HN for 10 years. It's always been this way. It's never "easy" to get the attention of the community. But there are some things that can help, such as the time you post.
Check out these heatmaps of the average/mean post score versus hour/day of post and you can see the trends: https://hackerbook.dosaygo.com/?view=archive
I'm curious, how do you explain the frequency of stuff that rockets to the front page only to get lambasted in the comments for being a total shitshow? Are there really that many oblivious upvoters in /new who fire off upvotes based on title alone?
> Sometimes it's title. Sometimes it's timing. Sometimes it's more substantial - a chance to rethink, redo, rebrand, rewrite, etc.
How do you choose what to change? No interaction means no feedback.