If you look at what people outside HN talk about HN, it's not uncommon to see wannabe tech entrepreneurs talking about how to promote their products via Show HNs and how to stay HN front page. It's honestly a little sad considering that HN has a tendency to rip these projects apart.
Show HN is for showing a cool project you've built. To warrant front page placement, it has to “gratify intellectual curiosity”, just like everything else. There needs to be some kind of novel breakthrough or something for others to learn from. Or, sure, some way it can help others with their work or life.
And yes, a byproduct of all this may be that some people buy a license or subscription. But submitters who are just trying to get attention and sales for a commercial product don't belong in Show HN.
I've seen some claim they do it to avoid stylometry or being fingerprinted, or because of social anxiety problems.
Some people just have a compulsive need to optimize everything, and HN's guidelines and tone policing are more easily followed by a bot than a human.
HN's guidelines aren't that strict and the mod hammer is a plushie. It's not difficult to get by here. It's also kind of useful for critical reflection/self-regulation to hear the occasional "you came in too hot" or "don't be boring" from a moderator.
Seems better to me to just try to be sort of reasonable and let the mods nudge you if they need to and let your comments be downvoted from time to time. What is the goal of these people, to never experience correction in their lives? To never write an unpopular comment?
Look at all the people who complain about cancel culture. There's a huge swath of people who don't ever want to hear "that was mean/bad/shitty".
Yes?