> I don't know why this is on hacker news thought. (sic)

Because someone posted it, and others upvoted it, and it got enough upvotes while it was new to get recognized by the algorithm and promoted to the front page. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

I feel the same, but it's an unavoidable cycle IMHO. Any subculture that becomes popular gets diluted by more average people, and the content becomes more basic and banal. You can flag and downvote, but eventually there are enough people who treat a platform like HN as a general discussion board, without regard for cultural alignment. It seems that stuff like politics and random recipes are on the rise, but it's not against the rules, so maybe it really is just a general discussion board that's evolving into the mainstream.

There ought to be an XKCD for this, but instead it's from the FAQ.

In short: somebody thought it was interesting enough to submit, and enough other people voted for it that it got to your attention.

That's it.

If it ends up with 2000 points and sits on the new page for 3 days, I'll be quite surprised, but strange subjects do that.

my thoughts exactly.