The Billionaires vs. BrandonM | Hacker News Reader

The Billionaires vs. BrandonM

zedshaw.com

26 pointsclassicsnoot5 comments

This post seems to be based on the idea that dhouston was "throwing his success in BrandonM's face", but I'm not sure I see that. dhouston is thanking the HN community, and specifically BrandonM, in that comment. If you look at BrandonM's response[0] (which Zed cropped), he even congratulates dhouston on his success.

This post seems to imply conflict where none exists.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661824

I have a very different interpretation. If dhouston didn't say anything about that comment, someone will write a comment to remember it and quote it. If the old comment were deleted from HN, someone will still have a copy and copy it in that post.

Even worse it will be a partial quote, perhaps only of the first part, without the second and third part that are more spot on. [The first one is technically correct, but overestimate the normal user ability, so it's almost funny and is the only one that is quoted.]

Moreover, deleting the old comment will delete the rest of the thread that has a nice conversation between the two main characters of the story and a few more users. Reading all the old thread make the comment more interesting.

The main problem is that it's a classic comment like

> No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame. -CmdrTaco, Slashdot.

It's a classic comment that is impossible to erase, and perhaps it will be quoted for centuries. I never read the full thread. Is it interesting? How does the comment change viewed in that context?

Someone said this in the congratulations thread, but I think the salient point is that BrandonM's comment was upvoted highly, not that it was particularly offensive.

Hacker News has a strong negativity bias. Most of the time the top voted comment is a snarky takedown of the post. Especially in the earliest days of startups, its far better to be a cheerleader on the outside than a cynic (unless the startup is unethical). It's just so hard to build successful companies, and so easy to dismiss things at that early stage.

And yes, I know this very comment is deeply ironic in a way

edit: thanks for down-voting me OP!

In my experience it's more of a pushback or contrarian dynamic. The first wave of comments tends to be negative as people object to the article (unless it's particularly interesting, which is the case we hope for), and the second wave tends to be positive as people object to the objections.

You're right about the upvoting though. Bad upvotes are a bigger problem than bad comments. ('Bad' here means 'not helping with intellectual curiosity and civility'). If you put that together with the pushback thing, it explains a curious phenomenon: why at the top of so many active threads sits a comment saying "I can't believe how negative the comments are here". It sounds self-contradictory but it's not, because there are multiple generations of comments. That's a pushback comment attracting a lot of pushback upvotes.

I don't have the ability to downvote. What is more, I upvoted it, and with the account I always use, as opposed to a throwaway account, which you decided to use for some reason. That is the ironic part of your post.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com