I don't think HN can necessarily be to blame. It might just be one of those "you're getting older, so think things were different when you were young" things, but I certainly feel I have a shorter attention span and have to try really hard to pay attention for extended periods. I don't know what to blame, but suspect that the attention economy is part of it. It could also be that I'm both a programmer and a gamer, so my brain now expects to be stimulated a lot of the time.

Also, just in case it's one of those words that you've been mixing up (rather than a typo), I thought you might appreciate knowing that it's "empathize with", rather than "emphasize with". I had that for the longest time with not knowing that the spoken and written versions of "awry" are the same word...