No, of course not coincidence. It's just that people didn't have an alternative until 2021-ish. Users hated SO for many years prior, but had nowhere to go other than small niche communities. When LLMs came into play, it was just the obvious choice.
replyIn an alternate universe, where LLMs didn't exist, I bet you SO would be equally dead by this decade. Someone better, with healthier values and a more welcoming community, would come up and steal their lunch.
If stack overflow was universally loved, AI would still kill it.
replyPeople here seem to be so emotionally invested in hating stack overflow that they seem to think AI was like ~10% of the reason it died, when it was 95%.
Both things can be true. SO was universally hated because they let (or actively incentivized) bullying run rampant and destroy the culture.
replyAnd yes, it's possible AI would have killed it anyway, despite its best efforts. But in this version of parallel universes, AI was only a catalyst. Its fate was sealed well before 2020.