alt Hacker NewsIt's fascinating how someone can say that they "could not rule out it being real until like 30% in" and then when I point out that they could, since it says so at the top, they just dismiss that and declare that they don't read it, rather than consider that it's in the "pro" column for paying attention to such things. (And tags are very different in purpose from banner ads, so not reading the latter is no reason not to read the former. I've noticed that other things that some people don't read are titles and authors -- I make it a practice to read both.)
I think it's also fascinating that you can be so judgy, and felt the need to reply to yourself to announce this to the room instead of to me. Really, what's the point of that? Does it help you feel superior?
I've found the information density and accuracy of tags to be poor. I tend to ignore navigation infrastructure like this.
Note that I did not say it was not possible to determine it was satire promptly; as I said, I had ascribed it a high probability of it being satire early on. I also didn't need to announce that I had been uncertain. Telling the truth like this comes with psychological safety.
And psychological safety, in turn, depends upon people not coming out of the woodwork to congratulate themselves on being smarter than you because you were not quite so quick on the draw as them. I feel like this entire subthread just exists for this purpose, starting with Xandrius's "I guess it's time to rethink how sharp the HN folks truly are." That's what I sought to counter by admitting my uncertainty.