LOL
Therefore, stating that a bunch of people on hacker news wrote something goes on to say absolutely nothing more than just exactly that.
This is to point out the extrapolations you made are totally unsupported without more than anecdata. The very well sourced article linked would indicate you are cherry-picking and/or misrepresenting.
Let's say I did read "those thread". If I were then to come back and say "nope - it all checked out, the histrionics were in your head." I'd wager you would respond by saying I read the wrong threads. I doubt you are willing to engage in a good-faith discussion further at this point. I'm not sure exactly which point you are making, which threads you are thinking, and I'm certainly not going to go try to find the evidence for a very vague claim that you are making.
Your claim is that there is at least one internet commentator who made a prediction in potentially bad faith, pearl clutching, where that prediction did not bear fruit. This is based on examples which you recollect.
Can you claim that this is a phenomenon that is a majority opinion, or even widespread? You would be doing so based on examples, which is cherry-picking. In addition, using human recollection only introduces confirmation-bias.
In contrast, an article that sites something like 20 different studies, which shows that indeed a number of negative outcomes did occur is a very different basis for making statements.
Rule of thumb, unless you have data - you don't know, and if you think you do, you're probably wrong. Therefore those that claim big things without giving data...
Please review, these guidelines are what keeps this site different from Reddit or Twitter, or any other trolly comment section of just about any other website: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously;"
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity."
If it is not clear, I find the histrionics a form of performative trolling.
Unfortunately, chat communities on the modern internet are more about performative trolling (as you would put it), rather than ever admitting mistake or being wrong. It's about noise generation and not much more. With luck, hacker news can be a last bastion where the noise is unwelcome, whereas facts, data and analsyis are welcome. That is a difference between reddit or Twitter & here.
- others have pointed out that the histrionics is your perspective. You noted statements like "the site will be down all the time", others have corrected that they have seen statements like "greater downtime" - and the data does back that up.
- therefore, what are you talking about exactly? This is why I'm saying you have the burden of proof to show exactly what you are talking about, with quotes, links, citations, data. Otherwise it seems that you're making a mountain of a mole-hill from cherry-picked data that likely fit your own confirmation bias. Which is not really a useful insight when someone is just saying: "see, gee, that one person over there - they exaggerated!" Is it really a large number of people that were making incorrect statements, enough that you're not just cherry-picking data? Hopefully you got the point, that nobody's word is really just taken at face value here, and those that are - are opinions and are not worth much (which goes for my opinions too, and anyone else's here.)
If you can point out where I am cherry-picking data, please do so. If you would point out exactly how I have violated the HN discussion guidelines, please do so (arguably this is turning into a flame-war, mea culpa again for entertaining a bad faith argument for too long)
Otherwise, at this juncture your claim, "at least one pearl clutching internet commentator turned out to be wrong" is not super interesting and your incorrectly extrapolated opinion that "all of them who said X were wrong" is unsupported, debunked by previously cited data, and is a good example of cherry-picking data. You were asked to provide citations and/or backing data for your opinions, and it seems the best you have mustered is: "I'm rubber and you're glue"