Hacker News Reader

Comment by 14 | Hacker News Reader

I am very interested to ready the comments and see where the votes land. From my experience any time you criticize the US here on HN you are heavily criticized or downvoted. Sometimes after making a valid point. I have learned to not take it personally and have always told myself I am sure there are state actors from many nations on many forums trying to persuade a perspective. If someone wants to downvote but not provide a rebuttal they probably are just offended by the posters comment or part of some mechanism trying to sway a narrative. I don’t think it is just state actors but also commercial interests.

View on HN

Really? I think you can make a generic “US bad, <insert other country name, typically from Europe> good” and you’ll get a cheering chorus from HN, Reddit, Twitter, etc. on… almost any topic these days.

As a US citizen I just don’t really care anymore, I sometimes get a good chuckle every time someone tells me I’m oppressed or living in a hellhole. I’m happy where I live and though I recognize there’s faults and I do try to improve them where I can. Maybe it’s state actors, maybe it’s not; I wouldn’t care about a stranger’s opinion in real life, so why would I bother caring about a stranger online? Too little time in life for that.

I don’t know much about Europe or other countries so haven’t made many critical comments towards those countries. But when I’ve been critical about the US, my neighbouring country I’ve always had a lot of flack for it here on HN. But you are right life is too short so I say my piece and not worry if people vote down or up I am just trying to be part of the conversation.

I think there are actually many posters on HN that are critical of the US. I would say that such opinions are more popular than they were a few years ago. On the other hand there are also a fair amount that have an idealized conception of that country.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com