My issue is with rhetorical methods such as that, yes, but let’s not cross the line into mocking the people using those methods. Rhetoric is often taught in morally-neutral terms in the schools underpinning tech — especially at Stanford, the big one next door to YC/HN in Palo Alto! — and the seeming insult of that comparison (I’ve never seen Columbo) will make people less likely to reconsider their rhetorical choices. Whether they want to be heard more successfully or (as I hope) they realize that rhetorical methods are morally-charged in real-world communities or they’re asocial like me and this offers a method-hack for social interaction efficiency, it’s the method that matters here, not the person behind it.

(One benefit of being nameblind at HN’s community size is that it’s easy for me to treat everyone the same, because I lack any recognition for whether I’ve spoken with someone previously or not. I acknowledge it’s not that easy for other people, but certainly it has the upside of forcing this ‘method, not person’ approach I describe into every interaction I have here :)