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Comment by bananalychee | Hacker News Reader

Tangential comment, but I now see people adding disclaimers reiterating their political affiliation to their posts regularly and I want to say that you shouldn't have to justify bilateral criticism. It doesn't imply equal magnitude, and it's only taken that way by bullies in dogmatic bubbles.

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I don't mind getting some extra clarity on where someone is coming from.

Your rationality here will surely be flagged. Over apologizing is the new norm to avoid being canceled for dissenting opinions.

The commenter is right that you shouldn't have to state those kinds of beliefs, but pragmatically this is a message board that invites all sorts of responses. Those additional notes are an attempt to head-off annoying and wrongly-based counter-responses built on assumptions that shouldn't have been made. But just because they shouldn't be doesn't mean they won't be.

Your comment evoking a victim complex on the other hand I find a far more annoying element of online discourse.

Thank you, because this is exactly why I did it, and will continue to.

So often when I write a comment I find responses either missing the point, laser focusing on something offhand/tangential I wrote, or imbuing my post with a viewpoint I didn't make. Sometimes the fault is mine, sometimes the fault of the responder.

I state where I'm coming from not as some sort of "tribal identifier", but simply to add clarity, and to stave off misdirected responses that I can find annoying.

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