That’s a great question! I do scan titles from an RSS feed more often than one might expect but ignore what I think of as “froth”. More example while a “show HN” might be like catnip to me, in reality I skip most of them (sorry, brave show-ers, you guys are great).

I’m not much of a social media conversationalist but I do find the discourse level of HN in the topics that interest me typically high enough that I often learn from it, thus it’s worth it and fun to participate.

(Discourse quality is bimodal but that’s true at a cocktail party too, even one full of nerds)