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Comment by spaceseaman | Hacker News Reader

Just to be clear for those coming to this after the fact: the reaction was not violent and immediate. Your comment was not nuanced. And it was very much not sensitive.

You attempted to claim that such overdoses are in part due to Reddit (and society in general) ostracizing neo-nazis and members of hateful groups. Not only is this just wrong, it implies that many affected by the crisis are members of such groups, which they are not (as someone who has a family member addicted to opioids I'm very annoyed by your comparison).

You just wanted to talk about your Neo-Nazi subreddits getting taken away and people called you out on it. Frankly, a Neo-nazi should be an outcast. A racist, sexist, etc should be excluded. And if they don't like that, then they should stop being a Nazi before turning to drugs.

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I claimed no such thing.

My point was solely "A certain subreddit got banned. Those people seem to have very few options, and maybe they were using it as a support group. They might turn to drugs now."

The reaction violent and immediate: within 5 minutes of posting the comment, you're now trying to imply some very strange things about me. You're even going so far as to "clarify" things for readers by posting something I did not say.

I'd like to end this conversation, because HN is optimized for good conversation and this isn't heading anywhere productive. Agreed?

I have a family member affected by a similar crisis, though thankfully not quite as intense. I'm sorry that the comparison annoyed you, but I was just searching for answers.

That is not a violent reaction.

"We need to kick you out of the country" is a violent reaction.

"What are you talking about this is dumb" is not a violent reaction.

You shared your ideas, they obviously weren't taken as good ideas by the group here, and people told you so.

No one called for violence against you, no one called you names (as far as I can tell), just no one agreed with you, and maybe a liiiiittle discourteously.

That's not violence, that's discussion.

It was violent in the sense of a chemical reaction. It also violently curtailed any chance of intellectual conversation. For that, I regret saying anything.

I'm not upset about mere disagreement. I'm upset that I was searching openly and honestly for an answer to this crisis that affects all of us, and in exchange I was labeled a neonazi sympathizer. On HN of all places.

The conversation shouldn't be about me and my ideas. That's selfish and counterproductive to HN's aims. The goal is to gratify intellectual curiosity, and the subthread I started here is the opposite of that.

HN isn't a place for ideological battle. The fact that two members of the community decided to immediately call out my bullshit suggests that HN wasn't the appropriate venue for this conversation.

I think your own post curtailed any chance of intellectual conversation, and you're taking it out on other posters.

And you've posted you figured it would go like this.

Take the hint you are giving yourself: best re-consider what it is you're about to post, given your past experiences.

> I have a family member affected by a similar crisis, though thankfully not quite as intense. I'm sorry that the comparison annoyed you, but I was just searching for answers.

Sorry to read about your family situation. That said...

There is an entire field dedicated to this. In the spirit of DRY, let's not spin our wheels with hackneyed theories, thinking we'll do better than the individuals that dedicate their lives to rigorously testing hypothesis and formulating therapies.

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