Story behind the 'Do you use your real identity on Hacker News?' poll
blog.binarybalance.com.au
blog.binarybalance.com.au
As long as I've been in business I have never seen such an amount of vitriol as from the anonymous coward the first comment here, and his 'contributions' to various HN discussions, but he illustrates my point quite nicely.
Ever since I posted my perspective on http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+pros+and+cons+of+%27fuck+you%... 'fuck you money' (for want of a better term) there seems to have developed something like the negative equivalent of a fan club.
What I find amusing is that none of these 'anonymous cowards' are nearly as anonymous as they think they are. Their trails (nicknames, ip addresses, writing styles and so on) usually make it fairly easy to identify them anyway. To a man I've never had any real life contact with these people and I've always wondered what is driving their hatred.
A friend of mine - female - who is a local celebrity has a file folder full of nastygrams, she jokingly refers to it as the kill-file, in case she ever gets murdered we should go through it, the culprit will surely be in there somewhere.
One part of why the HN community attracts negative attention from time to time I think is that being rejected for YC is a slap in the face to some that can't understand the difference between limited time and resources and a thing to take personal.
So they will rant about the 'cult' around PG, as if by trashing it they can make themselves feel better for not being a part of it.
On the highway, you need a driving license, on the internet you need no such thing, which is good, but comes with inevitable downsides as well.
Personally I couldn't care less about these childish attempts at attacking me, one funny fragment from the comment referenced seems to imply that I should be the one to want to do business with some vitriol spouting troll, see, that's what I meant with real life collaboration flowing from writing and interacting under your own name with others. That way you know a bit more about the people you're dealing with, which is a very useful filter in a world full of possibilities.
@Jacques: the last thing I was expecting in response to my post was a near incoherent rant from a disgruntled HN user. But yes, I'm glad that Mr Anonymous was able to so deftly demonstrate the downside of online anonymity and thereby reinforce the conclusion of my post. I don't think I've personally had any direct contact with you before now and I did not really have any preconceived opinion of you or your contributions to HN. But if it's between even handed and civil comments or over the top bitter trolling with a side of character assassination, that's not a hard choice.