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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Quite. this is nice, but the idea that 'I think you can actively try to become the hot new thing in part by working on being inoffensive' is naive. That approach works great for networking with peers but not against aggressive opposition.

There are a lot of people in the world who thrive on seeing other people worse off, to a greater degree than being equivalently better off themselves. In game theory terms, they're willing to experience a loss in order to inflict a loss on others. Online they present as trolls.

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I have no doubt that some people want to see others worse off. Some people seem to get angry about just about anything. Yet I suspect that most people respond negatively for other reasons. A common case is they perceive it as a loss to themselves, even when there is no justification to that perception.

To choose a concrete example from pedestrian safety: curb extensions are often proposed to make crossing pedestrians more visible and to slow turning traffic. A common criticism is a loss of parking. That criticism ignores that curb extensions rarely impact parking since people are not supposed to park within a certain distance of a crosswalk.

I personally think only about half of objections to any given proposal are sincere. Many people make arguments for strategic reasons rather than because of good faith belief. It's very noticeable on topics like climate change which yield many flame wars.

Some people make asinine dismissals that seem rooted in ignorance, and when rejected to schooled switch to ever more specific and obscure arguments, attempting to one-up the other person by displaying superior technical knowledge. They get huffy if someone asks why such an expert person would lead off with a demonstrably specious argument.

> A common case is they perceive it as a loss to themselves, even when there is no justification to that perception.

This is symptomatic of an oppositional mindset IMO.

It always befuddles me when people describe me as naive, especially if I know for a fact they know my backstory.

I was sexually abused as a child. I'm a former military wife who raised two special-needs kids pretty much alone while the husband was elsewhere. I spent years homeless. Etc.

Hacker News has proven to be a poor networking opportunity for me, which I've complained about quite a lot. It's not done kind of secret. Being charming here attracts romantic interest, not career success, and that's been a dead end for years for all inquiries because of my medical situation.

I'm no longer homeless but I remain dirt poor. As is often the case, I'm currently flat broke because it's late in the month and my ability to make the front page of HN still fails to result in some kind of adequate income.

I've not remotely had a sheltered life and I've been dealing with small town politics since not long after I moved here. I've already become acquainted with some of the local pain points.

I also appear to be the highest ranked openly female member of HN and I seem to be the only woman to have ever made the leaderboard. Twice now in fact as I did previously under a different handle.

For that and many other reasons, I think my approach works. Though it certainly at times resembles the wry observation about democracy being "the worst thing ever -- except for all the others."

I'm describing a specific sentence as naive, not the person who wrote it. I had no awareness it was your blog, so I'm sorry my comment hurt your feelings. Nonetheless, we hold different opinions on this.

My feelings aren't hurt. Befuddled means confused or perplexed, not upset.

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