Untrue. The replies by bachmeier >>36916075 dredmorbius >>36918463 and philwelch >>36916010 were fine. Respectful, not condescending. The problem is not the existence of replies, it's the content and tone of replies. There's a reason I only mentioned the two of you.
An opinion about what? The problem is that it was an opinion about me.
Criticize ideas all you want, but getting personal and criticizing other commenters is not something that should be happening here at all. "You had a choice" is not a productive or desirable line of conversation. Even if I open up and offer an insight into my personal feelings about myself and my own experience, as I did in my original comment, that's not an open invitation to be a target for personal criticism.
> It's your choice to interpret it as negative.
This is just more of the same "You had a choice" handwaving. How about taking some responsibility for your own words and replies and how they might be perceived by others? That's how conversation works. "I can't control how other people perceive my words" is a gross falsehood. Ask professional writers about that. Of course you have a great deal of control over it. You had a choice too.
You are reading into this really negatively. I said nothing judgemental toward you in my reply and only mentioned that you don't always have to respond. I have no wish to argue with you in a state like this. I'm going to leave this conversation before it becomes any more negative. Have at it.
That was judgmental. If you don't realize it, well, then I'm informing you of that fact now.
You don't need to mention what I can/should/have to do. It's completely off topic for HN. Unsolicited life "advice" from internet strangers, which is often veiled criticism — especially an empty tautology like "You always have a choice", as if were discussing philosophical free will — is usually unwelcome, and it's baffling to me how some internet commenters haven't learned this yet, unless they simply don't want to learn it.
I'm well aware of my own choices and ability to choose or not to choose. I don't need to be told by strangers about this, as if it were some revelation. It's not a revelation, and nobody here (or anywhere) needs such replies.
This is particularly the case where there seems to be an existing communications failure --- talking cross-purposes, not being heard/seen, failure to acknowledge points or caveats, uncharitable constructions, and the like.
The knack of delivering criticism without aggravation or raising hackles is a true skill. It's one dang's developed well, though he's not always successful. Part of his toolkit is having a set of standard responses to situations which have been honed over time. I'll often link to his own admonitions, though even that doesn't always work, see: <>>36890303 >.
I give an honest effort, then try as best I can to roll with it.
On some platforms it's possible to mute or block profiles, and I find that that's a tremendously useful capability. (I feature the advice as one of the pinned toots on my Fediverse profile: "Block fuckwits". And acknowledge that, yes, sometimes I'm the fuckwit.)
HN for various reasons doesn't offer this as basic functionality. It does have the option of collapsing threads (the setting is retained until a post is about a week or two old, due to systems limitations of the HN server itself). But at least the annoyance isn't staring you in the face whenever you return to your past threads for that week or so.
Even with technologically-mediated options, the practice goes against fundamental human psychology, which is to defend oneself.
(There's a parallel to this I'd thought of in an earlier response but didn't mention at the time: under US law, there is a legal protection against self-incrimination, but that is instituted insidiously in that in order to invoke it, one must forgo the option of defending oneself in the moment. Legally, to have that option one must have a legal advocate, though that costs money, which many defendants in either criminal or civil cases don't have the wealth to access. In that light, Fifth Amendment protections are something of a cruel joke against psychology.)