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Comment by drivebyacct | Hacker News Reader

If a woman said she's interested in you, never calls back, and says SHE will call YOU, you wouldn't have hope and stay interested?

I don't understand why this thread seems to be going out of their way to shit on this guy. It's not like Apple said "eh" and didn't respond, they kept saying they'd get back to him and never bothered.

It's called leading someone on, it's rude, and I'm startled at the number of excuses that are being made for this guy.

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> If a woman said she's interested in you, never calls back, and says SHE will call YOU, you wouldn't have hope and stay interested?

Wait, what? This is the classic way by which someone expresses that they are not interested without saying so directly. Don't call us; we'll call you.

I disagree. It can often mean what it says it means. But if body language is negative, don't count on a call back.

Are you an Asker or a Guesser?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/change-li...

I'm an Asker but I don't know why I was downvoted. Two months ago I saw a woman in a coffee shop and hit on her. I invited her to go out with me and see Taming Your Dragon In 3-D. She declined and said it was lame. But she took my number and said she'd call me and invite me to a beach party some time. I never got a call from her, and even saw her again in the same coffee shop, but didn't bring it up. She called me today to invite me out this weekend to a beach party. My point is that you can never predict these things. If someone is giving you the "polite yes" or the "polite maybe" but is giving you bad vibes via body language, then you can use that to help gauge your interpretation.

That's shitty and I still can't believe people are making excuses for this type of behavior. It's pathetic.

Most pathetic downmodding I've seen on HN. This isn't even passive aggressive, this is just being a shitty human being. Fuck you all.

It's really cool that HN is going the reddit route of downmodding comments that they disagree with. Although I don't even think my comments would have been downmodded over there. Because we're all hip and "hackers" at HN we just tolerate and expect people to be shitty to each other in the business world. Real cool guys.

. <-- The world's smallest violin.

People are downvoting you because your response was so acerbic. This reply isn't helping.

No it's not. Point out what was so "acerbic" in my original reply. I've read it twice now and there's nothing out of line in it.

The only emotion I injected was "I am startled". Yeah, really `acid in temper or mood`. Especially when * ironically* I was addressing the acerbic comments being pointed at the author for ACTUALLY BELIEVING people when they told him they were interested.

Is it opposite day on HN or did I miss a memo?

I didn't say it was out of line, just acerbic.

"shitty" "can't believe" "pathetic"

Strong words. HN will generally downvote strong displays of negative emotions, especially if it's something purely subjective.

It was also slightly accusatory, saying other HN users were "making excuses" for this behavior. There's some ambiguity as to whether you meant the behavior itself was pathetic or the people "making excuses" were pathetic. I think you meant the latter.

Maybe this is an easier way to understand it: imagine you're in a room filled with people talking about this issue, and you stood up and said what you said out loud. How do you expect people to react? Positively?

I can't believe I'm explaining this in such detail. Haha.

I would call people out for excusing leading people on and lying to their faces. In public. In a room full of people that disagree with me. If I am in the wrong and downvotes (or in our analogy looks of disapproval or murmurs of hatred in my direction) are my punishment I will take them proudly. I think excusing the behavior is nearly as shameful as being the person doing the lying and deceiving.

I can't believe I'm explaining this in such deal. I meant the usage quite literally. I'm shocked that an intelligent community such as HN is excusing the behavior because it's supposedly "normal". I think the treatment and thus the excuses are "shitty" which doesn't have a formal definition for me to rattle off, but suffice it to say I think it covers "unacceptable behavior" which is a category that lying and leading people on generally falls into.

You go, girl.

I see you replied again so I think I should respond, though initially I wasn't going to. (And note that I can't downvote your comment, since it's a reply to mine, so I'm not the one draining your karma.) With that preamble finished:

Perhaps your comment is getting downvoted because your premise seems incorrect? When I first saw your reply, I thought, "Hey! That's not fair! Just because I explained what people do doesn't mean that I excused what they do." I was being descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, I thought your reply was pretty unfair, but I was not going to reply because I felt like it was just splitting hairs.

Now that you're getting downvoted and have replied a second time, I just thought I'd point out that others may have felt the same way about your comment as I did. Indeed, the very same people who are downvoting your comment very well may not agree with the behavior that my comment described as being typical.

Which is why I said excuses being made up and down the thread. I didn't mean to imply that you were excusing it, but many people were saying that Apple was being more reasonable that the developer which is why I spoke out in defense of the developer.

I don't buy your explanation. I'd like to, but all over this thread there are highly upvoted comments that explain that this guy was out of lining by expecting anything at all, even though Apple continually led him on. They could have sent two teeny-tiny bytes 'N' 'o' and been done. But instead they were dicks.

I don't really see why my reply was unfair. If you weren't making excuses for apple, fine, but there were dozens of posters on this topic that are/were.

What we have is a situation where both parties behaved imperfectly. Since it was the outside guy who made the whiny woe-is-me-I'm-a-victim blog post about it, it's everybody's instinct to point out what he did to deserve it.

On the other hand if the Apple engineer were the one writing the blog post everybody would jump on what he did that was wrong.

And this is okay?? This is acceptable? This is not a community that I want to be a part of.

It's normal. I'm not sure why you're getting so worked up about it.

Dare I suggest you might be upset at an analogous situation in your own life?

You're welcome to suggest it, but it's really not the case. If someone did that to me I would be upset. I'm sorry that I have the common decency not to lie to people's faces, deceive them, string them on and then expect them to take it with a smile on their face. I'm working for the man now anyway. Not much to be upset about really.

If a woman said she's interested in you, never calls back, and says SHE will call YOU, you wouldn't have hope and stay interested?

No.

Whoever writes Roissy in DC: http://roissy.wordpress.com/ is an asshole but also hilarious. It might be worth reading.

In addition, the reason people are ragging on this guy is because a) the behavior is typical and b) not surprising from the POV of Apple. In addition, the guy is making the mistake PG writes about in Two Kinds of Judgment: http://paulgraham.com/judgement.html .

I don't think the point is to "shit on this guy". The point is to learn and hopefully have a better experience next time.

As for the woman, the odds are not looking good in such a situation.

lul just shit on her amirite

Are you still complaining that you don't know why you're getting downmodded?

No, I've lost interest in bothering, I'm pretty much just mocking it now.

My comment just above and the comment comparing reddit to HN, I fully expected to get downmodded. The other comments were simply chastising HN's mockery of the guy that actually believed what the Apple engineer said and IMO do not deserve to be downmodded.

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