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Is Reddit bleeding into HN now? The anti-work subs often feature these whiny hot takes like "woe is me, I don't get to do whatever I want" followed by a comical self-impressed implication that there's a great academic discourse behind this profound thought. Not used to seeing it here though.
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I don’t think it’s specifically Reddit, but more like “normal life” bleeding into HN. The tech industry (and therefore, HN) has this weird “positive thoughts only” vibe where everything negative is considered whiny and curmudgeonly (as the newest HN posting guideline puts it).

Uncritical “this is great, that is awesome, things are wonderful” posts get a pass here and are not held to some high academic discourse standard, while “things are not so great, life is not that good” posts get responses like we’ve seen in this thread.

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On the contrary, there are plenty of things to complain about and I personally find HN to be a tough, even cynical, audience. The guidelines don't say you can't be negative, you just have to explain your reasoning.

One doesn't have to subscribe to toxic positivity to see the childish absurdity of a statement like "It’s difficult to keep moving knowing that we don’t have the ability to opt out of the way our whole society works."

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Regarding the childish statement: I think we’ve all felt like that at some point in our lives. If you haven’t, I kind of envy you. I can admit that when I had a child I agonized over the fact that I was bringing a life into this pretty terrible world without considering whether that new life wanted to be in it. Nobody actively consented to being part of society, it’s just a default. And it is extremely difficult to opt-out. I don’t think that’s a particularly absurd belief.
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I think when you start talking like this, you're winding yourself up, which is just not a good way to confront tough decisions.
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> It’s difficult to keep moving knowing that we don’t have the ability to opt out of the way our whole society works.

Pretty much nobody ever did, in any society, with few exceptions. "Going to America" was one exception, and then "going west". But for most people, for most of civilization, that has never been an option.

And, in fact, the whole system is stacked against us less than it has been for most of the history of civilization. You aren't a serf. You aren't a slave. You aren't an indentured servant, or bound to a ruler or leader in any way.

But I think what many people are feeling is the first derivative. There was a time when the system worked better for people (at least for white males) - say the 1950s or 1960s. People can feel the first derivative being negative. They feel the loss of something. I think that's behind the surge of this sentiment.

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