It was generic in the sense that we use that term here. I say that because: (1) it included nothing directly related to the specific details of the article topic, and (2) it made a grand and sweeping claim. Those are shallow, because while they come with a lot of activation energy (e.g. high indignation levels), they include very little information. Shallow statements on divisive topics are automatically flamebait.

The reason we call these ideological flames is because of the effect they have on threads. The probability is high that they will turn discussion away from any specific topic and into the generic theme. Like flames, those have the habit of consuming everything they touch and destroying what was there before. It's therefore a good metaphor.

Here's another metaphor. The grand generic topics are like the black holes of internet threads. If you fly too close to them, the thread gets completely sucked in (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

This is a shame, because those discussions are so repetitive, and curiosity withers under repetition (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). What we want instead are discussions that are different from what's been discussed before. Curiosity thrives on diffs because diffs are what's interesting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

Note that all of this would be just the same if you were battling from the opposite ideological position. Actually the two poles of these battles resemble each other far more than they resemble the audience between them, which consists of readers who are here for curious, thoughtful discussion—not to defeat enemies.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.