Show HN: Hacker Smacker – spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance

Hacker Smacker just slid into Hacker News with three tiny orbs that let you tag commenters as “friend” or “foe,” then see your friends’ picks too. It’s open-source, nods to Slashdot nostalgia, and promises faster scrolling through long threads. The pitch: less time doom-reading, more time on the good stuff. The vibe: instant spice. One early adopter literally shouted “Installed!” while racing to revisit past debates. Another crowd is side-eyeing the wording, with a sharp call to ditch “friend/foe” for something gentler like “engage/ignore.” Translation: labels matter, and tone sets the mood.

The hottest debate? Power dynamics. A commenter warned this could create “karmic supernodes” where famous users get green-dotted into mini-celebrity hubs, making the friend-of-a-friend map less about quality and more about clout. That’s drama gold. Meanwhile, the contrarian camp is yelling “Bubble thickener”—basically: don’t block what challenges your beliefs, or you’ll end up in a comfy echo chamber. For balance, someone dropped a link to a similar highlight-only tool, no shared network, implying this isn’t entirely new—just more social.

So is Hacker Smacker the mute button for HN or the spice rack for comments? The community’s split: some want color-coded peace; others want messy, challenging debates. Either way, the green and red dots have people talking, clicking, and maybe rethinking who they read on GitHub and the Chrome Web Store.