Because the smartest people in the room got their asses kicked in the most public way by an adversary that they claimed is an incapable drunk.
Now they are embarrassed.
Now they are embarrassed.
Hacker News is a community. You don't have to use your real name, of course, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.