I’m still not following. What distinguishes things that are “real” from things that are “not real”. Like, chupacabras are not real, but Twitter isn’t like them.
Of course it's not real. This is Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation in practice. When you cannot tell the difference between a real person represented in the simulacra (i.e. a site like HN) and the simulacra being generated at will by a malicious actor (i.e. a simulation, fake accounts developing a history of posts, bots, guerilla marketing, etc.) then the smart person will recognize it for the un-reality that it truly is.
Just because it isn't real, though, doesn't mean that it can't be fun :)
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