Tell HN: Thank you, HN – from shadowban to one of the happiest days of my life

A few days ago, I posted a tiny C project I made in just 2 days — a minimal, header-only alternative to giflib — to Show HN. But it wasn’t my first post.

My first real project was PIT, a full-color terminal image viewer written in C. I spent months on it and tried multiple times to get feedback by posting it on HN. Each time, it received very little attention. It felt like no one cared. Honestly, it was frustrating.

Then I made something small and simple — TurboStitchGIF. I thought: why not try again?

But right after I posted it, the submission was [flagged/hidden] by moderators. No explanation. I sent a polite email asking why. No reply.

Then suddenly… the post was back.

And something amazing happened: it started getting upvotes — 19 in total — and positive, thoughtful comments. On GitHub, it got 14 stars in one day, more than PIT ever got. I even got my first follower on GitHub — something I honestly wasn’t expecting at all.

I just wanted to say: Thank you, HN.

Thanks to the moderators for restoring the post. Thanks to everyone who read it, upvoted, starred the repo, or left a kind comment. You turned a moment of doubt into one of the happiest days of my life.

If you’ve ever had a moment where you almost gave up — but tried one more time — I’d love to hear your story too.