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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate your thoughts on curiosity, but I don't think that argument addresses the situation as it is. The alternative here is not deeper curiosity—it's screaming matches and outright war.

Commenters who want to fight about these topics are not operating in curiosity mode, seeking to learn from each other. They're operating in battle mode, seeking to destroy each other, vent rage, and deploy verbal weapons such as snark, name-calling, and talking points at the enemy. None of that is what HN is for, as should be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html or spent much time here.

> You were clearly wrong. It hasn't vanished

HN has been around for 15+ years. A month isn't long at all. My expectation is still that this will subside, and when it does, it will sink into a swamp of amnesia, the same as has happened in the past.

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No one forgets Zuckerberg thinks Facebook users are dumb fucks: https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-im...

They won't forget Musk's fascist salutes either. If anything, Musk's salutes have been more public, have done more brand damage, and have revealed worse character.

Musk and Zuckerberg are showing you who and what they are.

Pay attention.

You may be right that people will remember that, and yes that's an interesting data point to compare it with.

I was talking about something else though. My claim is that the HN baseline will return to the status quo ante, just as it has after past political tsunamis, and that when it does, the current fever for every political story to be on the frontpage will fade into oblivion. I may be wrong about that, but we will have to wait to find out.

> showing you who and what they are. Pay attention.

That's a trope, indeed already a cliché, of internet political arguments. It would be in your interest to avoid those because although on a surface level they intensify a comment, at a deeper level they make it less persuasive (to the persuadable reader). I know you didn't ask for commenting advice and normally I wouldn't go there, but HN's guidelines specifically ask commenters to omit internet tropes: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

> I may be wrong about that, but we will have to wait to find out.

You are wrong.

> That's a trope, indeed already a cliché

Dude, that you think you might be right demonstrates that you haven't been paying attention.

Musk doesn't just have form, he's going for the record.

There will be a stink around Y Combinator's AI Startup School event. Musk will bring the stink with him.

And the source of that stink may be as simple as attendees having family members sacked by DOGE. Or it might be because he's of such weak character that he lies about being good at video games. Or perhaps it will be America's sell out of Ukraine, something Musk has advocated for:

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126714896/elon-musk-ukraine-...

There's lots to choose from.

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