I see what you're saying, but there's a difference between being contrarian for the sake of it and being so for a reason.

Having a good why is the difference between Darwin and a Darwin-award candidate. Sometimes a best practice is best, sometimes it's just a practice.

If you herd is HN readers, then you'd probably have to do some suboptimal practices to rage against the herd.

If the herd is everyone in the world that writes software, then I'm pretty sure everyone here is raging against that (much larger) herd.