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Comment by exzappos | Hacker News Reader

My intent is not to rip on him. I have a lot of respect for what he accomplished in life. Keeping Tony's problems secret and enabling them is a big part of why things ended this way though. There shouldn't be a stigma about admitting that Tony was suffering from drug addiction and mental illness. People have been using him all year instead of getting treatment for him. You should be directing your ire at those people.

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If this is true, you should delete your comments and wait until an appropriate time (post grieving) to post them, backed with evidence and discussions with people who knew him in the context of such issues, under your real name. Stop pretending that being an anonymous troll spilling rumors immediately after his death is doing some kind of good.

Then post under your actual name instead of being a troll hours after the dude has died. I’m all about having conversations about addiction. This isn’t it. This is smarmy and petty and if you had any conviction, you wouldn’t create a new account just to talk about how someone you “had a lot of respect for” died. You would do it under your own name or at least your own pseudonym.

I'm hesitating about whether I agree or disagree with you. I also do not like distasteful / disrespectful comments; and I can understand that people prefer privacy. However, this was simple factual information. I'm not sure keeping facts secret is a good thing even if done out of respect.

It is important that the public sees how many lives are destroyed by domestic abuse, suicides, addiction, and other social ills. And I fear that not talking about those details out of respect / privacy may do more harm than good.

It isn’t factual, it’s an allegation. He doesn’t have any proof other than a burner account created today.

If it is factual, I agree, have the discussion about addiction. But is it too much to ask to either have the conversation openly (and not in an anonymous comment full of judgment and borderline glee that a person is dead), and not in gossip-laden comments hours after the guy is dead? It’s gross and people defending unnamed gossip from a green rando is infuriating.

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