No. In fact I see this as a very underhanded rhetorical cheap trick - essentially a catch-22. Only on the most basic level is criticism of critical people some kind of hypocritical indictment.
'You say you don't like people taking things too seriously, yet it sounds like YOU are the one taking things too seriously. Curious'.
Why is criticism of company policies "shrieking", but criticism of criticism not?
Or to go a level further, why is my criticism of his criticism of their criticism a "rhetorical cheap trick", but your criticism to the power of four presumably legitimate?
Is this fifth level of criticism a "rhetorical trick"/"shrieking" too? And will your potential riposte be legitimate again?
I like your perspective of criticism to a power/derivative level, but that's not the angle I'm trying to come from. Rather, I am saying the nature of the criticism is what distinguishes between the two.
I do, however, read HN and every time a company changes policy due to some outrage, the first comment is always somebody saying something along the lines of what OP was saying.
That, to me, is just as annoying as I'm sure the original outrage was to OP. It's a low-effort rant about society and how it budges to spammy complaints without seeing the irony of being a spammy complaint itself.
I don't think the nature is fundamentally different and that might be where we disagree.
Understandable. And to be honest I'm increasingly fatigued in relation to what discourse has become. You had mentioned earlier that I was trying to police what is and isn't acceptable criticism, and in a way you're right. I would like to see a lot less hyperbolic pearl-clutching sophistry. But the downside is that trying to confront the use of such rhetoric is sadly perceived as negative or equivalent.
I don't think discussing those letter writers is similar to engaging in the actual pressure campaign, but it doesn't matter much anyway.
I just think it's likely that the people who prefer to see political ads are small in number but feel strongly and the people who prefer not to see political ads are large in number but less likely to organize around it.