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Hacker News Parody Thread (2013)

bradconte.com Essays & writing Essays & articles Culture & media Class of 2025-11 Hall of Fame
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Resurfaced independently across 5 calendar years, with breakout response in 2 of them.

submissions
5
submitters
5
observed span
2013–2025
peak thread · 329 comments
1046 pts
latest 20+ return · 2022-11-20
1046 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

HN comment order

Damn, I was afraid this was going to be someone stealing my genius idea. Gladly it was just tangential to that idea. Idea: Train an ai to construct entire threads based on the input of the title and link. There should be plenty of training material, and frankly I think it would be hilariously similar to the real threads. When new submissions are added to HN, the system will fetch the title and link, and predict the entire thread. You…

I disagree with the author. This isn't exactly a parody thread. A parody is "an imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialise an original work" [1]. For one thing, I would hardly call Hacker News comments "original work", and a simple creation like this hardly captures the full scope and breadth of comments on here. Furthermore, I'm not really sure why this belongs on HN, because it's not very technical, and frankly, not very intellectually stimulating. People on…

Fantastic article. Here's a little bit more about what was discussed. And some real life applications.

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
2

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
1650

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
520

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2013-03-05Hacker News Parody ThreadFirst breakoutB-Con589187
2015-09-29Hacker News Parody Threadthewarrior94
2022-11-20Hacker News Parody Thread (2013)Best thread · Latest 20+ point returnAkshatJ271046329
2024-03-28A Technical Blog Post by a Big Name Expertcolejohnson6620
2025-11-21Hacker News Parody Thread(2013)Hall inductionetrvic40