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Comment by dwc | Hacker News Reader

"because I want to freakin' kill this kid at least three times a day"

Nice. I just don't relate to this.

  > Nice. I just don't relate to this.

You don't relate to this? Mmmm. That's frustrating.

I see what you did there.

That seems normal. If you related to the desire to kil Jeff Atwood's kid then I'd be worried tbh.

I stumbled on that as well and had to pause and reread. I wonder if it's simply a matter of the way people process information. I'd peg Atwood as more of the extroverted type, and those with that style of thinking tend to exaggerate quite a lot in ways that otherwise would be seen as very peculiar to introverts unfamiliar with other styles.

Of course, it's likely not quite that simple. There are probably more personality dimensions involved. Go peruse your local grocery store's gift card section and see how many you relate to, then consider that in order to be profitable most of those cards must relate to most people. (Those that don't are replaced by those that do.)

> Go peruse your local grocery store's gift card section and see how many you relate to, then consider that in order to be profitable most of those cards must relate to most people. (Those that don't are replaced by those that do.)

But... but they're all atrocious. There must be some covert dynamic that counters that selection pressure. Maybe they're supposed to look attractive when people are actually looking to buy them on a specific occasion, as opposed to impulse purchases such as candy usually placed near the registers.

I love babies. I just can't eat a whole one.

If you have a child that you have never found to be frustrating or infuriating then you are a indeed very lucky.

I get frustrated often enough, and infuriated once in a while. But I don't want to freakin' kill my child multiple times a day. That's very sad, and a bit worrying. And if, as we all suspect, it's just to make a point, then it's still sad to hear a parent say something like that in such a public way, in a medium that may be preserved until one day the kid is reading this and turning red with shame. Or maybe it's all OK and I'm just being too sensitive.

Hyperbole.

It's weird, every time a blog post uses hyperbole or (even mild) dark humor someone on HN flat-out doesn't get it, spawning a large comment thread. I've not seen this elsewhere...

I think it's because of the karma points we get for comments that other communities don't get. Plus, karma is more than a status symbol here since it lets you downvote.

At least, I've found myself fishing for comment material before because I wanted to "be one of the cool kids."

Makes me think of that aspergers nerd stereotype.

You're being too sensitive, and a bit sanctimonious too. Kids learn to communicate from their parents, so Jeff's kids, should they ever read this, will know he is being hyperbolic.

Perhaps you're right.

Jeff used a rhetorical device called hyperbole. He does not literally kill a child multiple times each day.

Also, as long as we're being literal about everything, it would be impossible to kill a child (or anything else..) multiple times.

The 'multiple times' annotates occurrence of desire, not the subject of desire. He doesn't "want to kill him many times", but many times a day he "wants to kill him".

The children in question are from what he's said exceedingly small so far; possibly being thrown up on repeatedly and not having any idea which particular pattern of rocking is going to make your child stop crying this time is something he finds far more frustrating than you do - geeks often do feel that way because they want to be able to apply rational approaches to fixing things, whereas with such a small child that doesn't exactly work.

I really like children from about the age of 2.5-3 up, but before that they're ... impossible, not in a sense of "impossible to deal with" but in a sense of "this is so completely unmodelable logically that I am unable to it it into my headspace". I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to deal with this if I eventually decide to attempt to procreate.

Yet kids that young are logical. They want food and love, and they want to know that they will get those things. If they have those and still cry, they're sick. Later, it gets more complicated.

Plus, when they're your kids, they have half your genes (usually), and it's easier to grok them. I had that "no idea how to deal with a kid" geek/engineer perspective, and it went OK (kid was colicky, so it wasn't easy, but it wasn't irrational). But also note that in the grokking is the empathy (no need to fix anything other than the food and love and providing them consistently)--raising and loving a child is not rational.

If you really like kids that young and you're not a parent, then you probably don't have much to worry about. I never understood the nonchalance of parents who had just been puked on. But when I found myself there I understood.

I don't usually do this but I am going to officially tell you:

Yes, yes you are not only being too sensitive but you are freakin' blowing this completely out of proportion. Wanting to "freakin kill someone" is a very common figure of speech and isn't necessarily to be taken literally. Actions definitely speak louder than words and for all we know, he is likely a fantastic father who tries really hard to do a good job of raising his kids, as demonstrated by his attempt to find a better way of communicating with said children.

Also, the most purest form of obnoxious and selfish is definitely little children but that's ok, they cannot help it and as a parent you still find it adorable and probably don't want to admit the truth.

Thanks for saying it explicitly this time. And I mean that.

I did not intend to make a huge deal of this. Witness my original content, which was very brief. I wanted to convey that though the hyperbole was meant to garner a "yeah, I know exactly what you mean," it instead jarred me. Others obviously did not have this problem, but I don't think I'm alone here. Whatever you write, you're not going to please everyone. But in this case I'm not sure the hyperbole was even needed at all. The point could easily have been made in other ways, with just as much economy.

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