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Comment by johngalt | Hacker News Reader

My instincts say that this whole narrative is fabricated.

Unquestionably.

"Have you heard of [unimportant username] from [unimportant website] who just so happens to be you?" Yeah, right.

Not necessarily as unlikely as it sounds -- I've had several instances of people asking "have you heard of Colin Percival" when talking to people about the problems I find interesting. If he phrased things the same way as his pseudonym or raised similar issues, someone might easily recognize a similarity.

Do casual readers of TDW really pay attention to the handles those stories were posted under? That certainly isn't the sort of thing I pay attention to, and if I did, I wouldn't expect that other people do.

I would expect that in 99% of the cases where the answer to "Do you read TDW?" is "yes" the answer to the followup "Have you read the posts by [foo]?" would be "...uh, I have no idea.".

This story seems completely fabricated to me for this reason. EDIT: Mind, if TDW had a different format, more like HN perhaps, this wouldn't have raised my eyebrows. If I were asked in an interview (after revealing that I participate on HN) what I thought of tptacek's take on javascript crypto, I would not be surprised in the least.

Exactly. I didn't even know there were names attached to TDW stories at all. Is it a recent thing? I haven't been a regular for many years but read the occasional story here and there.

I don't know. I used to read TDW enough that I could recognize one or two comment trolls by name but I never noticed names anywhere else on the site.

The writing that is referred to is almost certainly from the Side Bar, not the main site. Articles posted on the main site aren't about the poster, they're submitted by users, then edited/embellished by the poster. I wasn't even aware that snoofle had posted to the main site before this, but I know him well from the Side Bar, where people submit their own personal WTFs. The interviewer's questions only make sense in reference to the Side Bar.

I'm not really sure how to objectively rank a website's importance -- their Alexa rank is top 50k, which seems decent for a site only relevant to IT professionals(?), and in some tech circles I've been in, it's quite well known. But snoofle has his own little piece of celebrity on TDWTF. The "Side Bar" is a spot where users can submit their own WTFs without them being approved/edited by the mod staff, and snoofle has posted a lot of gold there. He is one of maybe three posters whose usernames I actually recognize.

This is a distinctive feature of thedailywtf articles.

If only we had his real name, we could blackmail him into admitting the setup.

Probably, but hang around long enough and you will see/experience some crazy stuff.

Also, water is wet.

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