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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

> When I wrote in October that Mark Zuckerberg was going to kill his company, the street responded in kind, savaging Meta’s stock for burning cash building a metaverse that was never going to exist.

I can't help but this sentence got me triggered. Does the author honestly believe that his article affected Meta price?

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No.

"Responded in kind" means "moved in parallel with" | "with similar actions or in an equivalent manner" | etc.

The author doesn't claim the market acted because of their article, they mean that the market acted as though it also believed MZ was going to tank Meta.

I think the phrasing is confusing because on first parsing, it reads like the market is responding to the article

To my eye, as an Australian with decades of exposure to English Lit., long form essays, and technical writing (UK|Commonwealth English moreso than the central north american offshoot) it's a common idiom that describes other agents acting { in kind, in a similar manner, just as the first person voice did }.

I can see the confusion if that's your absolute first parsing of an unfamilar English turn of phrase.

For better of worse the language is riddled with such things and they can be very locale centric.

You say something in a certain way expecting people with a certain level of intellect to eat your shit and glean the meaning you want them to glean, making you more popular or sage-like to those people. Like Fox news.

It's not the idiom, it's poor structure; the object of the clause is ambiguous and could mean "responded to my writing" or "responsed to Mark Zuckerberg". E.g. "While I wrote" or "After I wrote" would remove the implication of causation that "When" has. But really it should just say "The street responded by savaging..." with no authorial preening.

That being said, it's a weird thing to get hung up on.

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