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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

You've crossed back into nationalistic flamebait repeatedly in this thread, which we just recently asked you not to do.

Would you please just stop posting generalized pejoratives about $NATION and $PEOPLE? In your case it's America and Americans, but it doesn't matter which particular nation someone has an issue with—it inevitably leads to increasingly low-quality and nasty internet discussion, which is just what we don't want here.

I know you're not doing this intentionally, but it's always many times more obvious to readers than it is to the commenter. Multiply the possible effects of such a comment by 100 and you'll get a more accurate picture of how this sounds.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22219018.

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Sure dang, I'll stop.

I personally found is fascinating that a person from the USSR (famous for propaganda) had the insight and self awareness to say they're very aware that every country is a propaganda machine, though while I was in the US for 5 months last year I met many people who had no idea they're in one too.

I would say the same is true in Australia, and Canada (the other countries I've lived in)

At no point was I trying to say America is crap (like many people assumed) and I tried to say that on two separate occasions, but all the other comments just jumped back to "American isn't as bad as china" (which is unrelated to my insight above).

But yes, I'll stop.

Imagine reading a comment about how 'interesting' it is that other countries have 'insight and self-awareness' while yours doesn't. It's not hard to see how that would land as a slight.

"You're in a propaganda machine" is one hop from "Wake up sheeple". That's a cliché of internet fulmination and never works. Posting like this is pushing a button that generates angry responses. It's your responsibility not to push the button. (Not that that's always easy, since we usually do it inadvertently.)

> Imagine reading a comment about how 'interesting' it is that other countries have 'insight and self-awareness' while yours doesn't. It's not hard to see how that would land as a slight.

"You're in a propaganda machine" is one hop from "Wake up sheeple". That's a cliché of internet fulmination because it never works. Posting like this is pushing a button that generates angry responses. It's your responsibility not to push the button. (Not that that's always easy, since we usually do it inadvertently.)

But when it's true, we need to have the perspective to realize that, just like the other commentor from the USSR. Just because it pushes people's buttons doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it - especially when it's true.

I'm originally from Australia, and yes, 100% without a doubt it is a propaganda machine. It does annoy me, and that's a good thing because it means I'm motivated to do something about changing it.

We can't simply not talk about things that might push people's buttons. Then we'd be just always talking about surface stuff, and never getting to the heart of anything, and - even worse - we'd never improve anything.

But sure, I'll stop. I'll stick to easy topics on HN. Sorry to use up your precious time again.

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