(I offer some level of apologies in advance, but this whole thing has touched a chord with me and any attempts to express myself eloquently seem to come up short, so I'm going to just let it out... some foul language may follow... though I'll probably delete this in an hour or so to stem the karma damage)
I really don't want to hear about that crap. Not because i find it taboo, or offensive, or because it is somehow too extreme for my fragile view on the world, but because this kind of crap is mundane, uninspiring, unoriginal and juvenile.
FFS, the highest voted comment was "draw some pictures", you have to be kidding me, how lame and predictable can a thread like that get? This is HACKER NEWS, maybe the discussion could revolve around that a bit, ya think? How about you try to write some fucking coherent and maintainable Perl? Maybe you can do that on acid...
And did you read the list of questions he was asking? "When I see a shape shift or melt, then reach out and touch it, will I feel the shape that I see, or feel its true form?" Are you fucking kidding me, really? Is there a cute chick with a Velvet Underground t-shirt standing around here somewhere that I'm not seeing?
You want to drop acid? Great, go for it, you have my blessings, but don't post to HN about it pretending you want to take some lame fucking pseudo-scientific approach to it.
This is Hacker News, I don't want to come here and feel like a fly on a wall at an art school scenester coffee shop full of Volvo driving trustafarians. I sure as hell don't want to read an entire thread about someone discovering hallucinogenic drugs for the first time. That discussion has it's place, that place is not here.
Also, just because that story was flagged or moderated or whatever, does not mean that you are some how being persecuted for your "counter-culture" beliefs. All too often someone says something stupid on HN (more often Reddit, but it seems to be happening more here) and they're moderated into oblivion, so they edit their comment claiming that their statement was just too mind blowing for the sheeple to accept, so it unjustly modded into oblivion. The reality is that the sheeple are quite open minded, they just think the comment sucked, was stupid, and deserved being moderated into oblivion.
So would you say all of that to my face? That was really harsh. I am a person, you know. I get happy and sad and have stupid ideas, just like everyone else.
I was trying to be helpful. I honestly thought it would be. I'm sorry for wasting a few minutes of people's time; trying to provoke an interesting discussion; not meeting your high standards of "worthy" content, and apparently churning out crap. I'm not sure what else to say. But I don't identify with Hacker News anymore, I don't think.
Since you don't seem to understand what led up to it, I will explain. I only posted after the following transpired (from my perspective):
1- Your initial 'Ask HN' post in which you said:
"Please try not to post a meta-comment about whether this should be killed -- just flag it. If it's detrimental, it'll be killed, and that will be the end of it."
5- And rms decided to post this story, and what I perceived as a passive-aggressive reference to your 'Ask HN' in the GP comment.
Really, I should have left it alone as my feelings were summed up better by someone else here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581091). But as implied by my list, the sequence of events was enough that I felt the need to rant about the issue.
So to answer your question, I would have said something to your face had a group discussion equivalent of the above happened, though probably not those exact words and fwiw, I would have been directing it at rms more than you for he is the one that decided to make it a two-story issue.
Also, I've only bee here a month (despite my join time, I didn't use the account until recently), just because you perceive something I say as dickish and unnecessary doesn't mean that the identify of HN has changed (whatever it was, I don't know). In other words, I am hardly representative of this community.
I enjoyed the conversation. I'm a bit surprised that the community got so fired up about it. I haven't been around on the site for all that long, so I'm a bit curious to know if there are other topics that are so divisive to the group.
I really don't want to hear about that crap. Not because i find it taboo, or offensive, or because it is somehow too extreme for my fragile view on the world, but because this kind of crap is mundane, uninspiring, unoriginal and juvenile.
FFS, the highest voted comment was "draw some pictures", you have to be kidding me, how lame and predictable can a thread like that get? This is HACKER NEWS, maybe the discussion could revolve around that a bit, ya think? How about you try to write some fucking coherent and maintainable Perl? Maybe you can do that on acid...
And did you read the list of questions he was asking? "When I see a shape shift or melt, then reach out and touch it, will I feel the shape that I see, or feel its true form?" Are you fucking kidding me, really? Is there a cute chick with a Velvet Underground t-shirt standing around here somewhere that I'm not seeing?
You want to drop acid? Great, go for it, you have my blessings, but don't post to HN about it pretending you want to take some lame fucking pseudo-scientific approach to it.
This is Hacker News, I don't want to come here and feel like a fly on a wall at an art school scenester coffee shop full of Volvo driving trustafarians. I sure as hell don't want to read an entire thread about someone discovering hallucinogenic drugs for the first time. That discussion has it's place, that place is not here.
Also, just because that story was flagged or moderated or whatever, does not mean that you are some how being persecuted for your "counter-culture" beliefs. All too often someone says something stupid on HN (more often Reddit, but it seems to be happening more here) and they're moderated into oblivion, so they edit their comment claiming that their statement was just too mind blowing for the sheeple to accept, so it unjustly modded into oblivion. The reality is that the sheeple are quite open minded, they just think the comment sucked, was stupid, and deserved being moderated into oblivion.