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Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

Dang, could you share how many times this thread was flagged, if at all? Also, did you or another moderator have to manually unflag it?

Implicit in your comment is the idea that I’m just imagining this, like a paranoid person claiming persecution. But IME, Bay Area Indians are highly supportive of Modi and are highly active on HN. They incite a flame war, flag the thread and the thread vanishes. If a moderator comes across it, they see that there was a flame war and the flag was justified.

I get where you’re coming from - that maybe I’m overestimating the prevalence of apologists for a mass murderer. Maybe I am. But I think you are discounting how effectively they use the mechanics of HN to shut down criticism of their deity.

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It wasn't heavily flagged and we didn't have to manually unflag it.

Thanks.

By the way, your explanation of that persecution complex was good. The challenge is people (like me) looking at and thinking “yeah, sounds correct except in my case, where I know for a fact I’m a persecuted minority on HN”

But maybe it’s enough to convince people in general that there’s no such persecution going on, even if there is. That way comments like mine that imply it’s existence end up with -10 instead of +23 or whatever. So fewer tedious comments, but maybe easier for the downvoting/flaming/flagging cabals (should they exist) to take control of the narrative on HN.

You’ve been doing this a long time. So you’ll probably make a good decision, whatever you decide.

> “yeah, sounds correct except in my case, where I know for a fact I’m a persecuted minority on HN”

Exactly! that's how we all do it. The weird thing is that even when you become aware of it, it doesn't stop. You simply become aware that you think this way, just as everyone thinks this way, and that despite knowing this, you still feel that you are the noble exception to the universal rule—a human among worms, as it were. It is like an optical illusion that persists even after you know that it is an illusion. However, the awareness seems to have the effect of modulating one's behavior, which is the important thing.

I suppose it's still an open question what really has a chance of shifting this at a community level. Asking people to go against human nature is a tall order. One thing I've tried is pointing people to similar-but-opposite generalizations being made by the other side; or showing them long lists of contradictory generalizations, like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. I'm not sure it really helps, though.

> But I think you are discounting how effectively they use the mechanics of HN to shut down criticism of their deity

I don't care about Modi but I flagged your comments because I'm tired about the endless whining about "them" supposedly manipulating HN. If you don't like Modi tell me why, don't go around strawmaning and generalizing Indian tech workers.

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