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Comment by jlawer | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has had professional help to go through what I will only refer to as "the dark patch of my life" I think your over reacting. This might be a cultural thing but as an Aussie, this is viewed as pure exaggeration and has NO connection to reality. If there is no connection to reality then why get upset about it? If there is no intention for a slight then why care?

Maybe this is one of the subtle cultural differences, but surely you agree it isn't fair to judge someone on your own cultural standard on the internet over something simple as a few words? If your truely offended by him, just ignore him.

In my mind the conversation is richer if we don't need to be so careful about dropping to the "Lowest Common denominator". Let there be colour, excitement, rants and exaggeration. In the end I think it helps understand people more then putting on the facade of beige that so many politically correct people insist on.

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There is a connection to reality.

What Linus is saying is: if you don't agree with me, you're an incompetent developer, get out of the way and shut up, and I don't want to hear any counter-argument.

It's a means of quality enforcement, to some degree. OK. But there is a point where it goes too far.

I don't insist on political correctness. I haven't complained about Linus' normal insults but he's telling people to kill themselves... it's a step too far.

You should read Your Mother's Tongue: Book of European Invective. You'd be surprised (and in your case, probably shocked) at what people call each other without any intention of actually insulting them.

For example, here in Portugal and in informal situations, it's reasonably common for a person to use an expression that essentially calls their mother a whore because they made something that somewhat annoyed you. Of course, no one is actually insinuating their mother sells her body for money, it's just an expression.

Thanks. I may actually read that, because it's clear to me that a lot of things really aggravate me that don't aggravate a lot of other people in the FOSS world, and if I want to get along, I'd better get over it. (Though that doesn't mean I will condone it or do it myself.)

Now THAT is a sensible attitude! Bravo.

Whenever there are large groups of people communicating, someone will find something to be offended at - and as long as it isn't personal or bigoted we need to just ignore it and move on. In this case, Linus' colorful use of language will almost certainly add some amount of weight to his statement.

Well, what Linus said IS personal, and I'd say it's bigoted, though that's harder to define.

But, if you have to put up with it to deal with these people, so be it.

Personal and bigoted? Really?

These words apparently mean different things to us.

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