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> So you're trapped in a mental prison and proud of it?

Starting your reply this way is not effective if your goal is changing minds. But it isn't, is it?

It is actually. And mental prisons are real, I was trapped in one for many years.

I'll stipulate that i have to tweak the way I say things as it's not coming across the right way.

Understood, sorry my tone wasn’t great either on my response to you.

Please do not cross into personal attack. We don't want this kind of thing here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Dang, look at the context. I was simply repeating his self-assessment back at him, and trying to flip it with a positive message that one's circumstances of birth do not define one's potential - unless you let it (mental prison). I feel like you've taken the exact opposite reading from what was intended.

That said, when people don't understand what you're trying to say, the fault lies with you. I'll try to rethink how i can phrase this kind of thing. I was trying to challenge in a positive way but it obviously didn't come across like that.

Putting a provocative spin ("you're trapped in a mental prison and proud of it") on someone's personal description and throwing it back at them is not likely to end well. When you add patronizing putdowns ("calm your jets") and outright slurs ("my poor white trash friend"—yes I know the GP used the slur, but it's very different when you use it), you're way into the territory of personal attack. That's no way to send a positive message.

I'm sure you had a positive intention, but intent doesn't communicate itself on the internet. The burden is on the commenter to disambiguate: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

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