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Comment by leopold_a | Hacker News Reader

I find it quite unfortunate that an ad hominem attack has removed this post from public discussion (due to the flagging). I thought HN was above such things!

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You are making sweeping generalizations in your article, and are trying to say "this is what everyone should do". Your article was flagged (by multiple people including myself) because it's massively, incredibly pretentious; not because one commenter is making ad hominems.

>You are making sweeping generalizations in your article, and are trying to say "this is what everyone should do". Your article was flagged (by multiple people including myself) because it's massively, incredibly pretentious; not because one commenter is making ad hominems.

Imho, I don't think flagging should be used as a tool for silencing content that you disagree with.

There's a lot of articles on HN I disagree with, I'm not flagging them. I flagged this one because it's especially trash, and cannot lead to useful discussion. The comments were immediately heated, too.

It is not an ad-hominem, ad-hominem is a personal attack on your character, ignoring the argument. All of those things the parent posted are accurately used to discredit your argument.

Saying "you have bad hair therefore your argument is bad" is ad-hominem.

Saying "This person has never worked a 9-6 office job while supporting 2 kids, a stay-at-home-partner and a mortgage; therefore they are unqualified to make such statements on how adults should spend their time" is a completely legitimate argument to make, it is not a personal attack.

It is only a fair response if you think having a 9-6 office job while supporting two kids necessitates, as a matter of course, an over-reliance on Netflix. (It does not.)

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