I have to suspect that part of the result comes from both participants having been told what to discuss, to establish common knowledge of what kind of conversation to expect.

Without that, unilaterally deciding to go "deep" with a stranger is violating a social norm (perhaps to a reduced extent if you start by saying "I know it's weird but I think deep conversations are better", but still even then). Which in turn probably makes you seem unpredictable, puts people on edge, and makes them question your motives.

I don't love the Win10 start menu, but I have to acknowledge that's partly just "I'm not used to this and therefore it sucks"

But the Windows 11 start menu (the one under discussion here) is apparently significantly different again.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/15/22535123/microsoft-windows-11-leak-screenshots-start-menu

If I remember the history of it correctly, I don't think they ever actually had an active Magic the Gathering exchange. Pivoted before launching the site but after registering the domain name. For whatever minor difference that makes.

You'd think they'd know their topic better, but no... all crypto-currencies are bitcoins, in the same way that all games consoles are Nintendos.

the "non-verbal cues" are facial recognition technology used to make sure one person isn't making claims under multiple identities

That... does not match the common/garden meaning of the phrase "non-verbal cues". That sounds like something you come up with to distract attention while you're furiously back-pedalling because people are correct that you have an algorithm trying to play lie detector, and potentially picking up human biases from its training data in the process.

"Once popular", more like still popular... with literally dozens of us. I guess this is nice if it encourages more sites to make RSS feeds available, but I've been following most things that way all along. Heck, I arrived at this very story via Slashdot's RSS feed.

Even when a site doesn't publish its own feed, there are services that will monitor a page for changes and make a feed for you. Long live RSS