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If I were to guess, HN doesn't like your comment because it feels like a certain type of manosphere article. Some sort of cross between self-improvement and advertisement, offering a potential quick fix. Includes a "the masses don't know this, but here is the truth" kind of thing.
But that's just a guess.
As for "advertising", I don't stand to gain anything from publicly and pseudo-anonymously sharing my experience of a medical treatment. If anything there are risks to doing that.
And as for "the masses don't know this", it's more "your doctor probably won't test you for this". Look up the symptoms of hypogonadism, compare them to those described in this article and observe that the article makes no mention of it. If you know someone suffering these symptoms, and most people do, see if this diagnosis has ever been considered. The answer is probably no.
It's not grey now as it's been voted back up, but it went down to -3 in a few minutes after posting, by far the strongest negative reaction I've had to a comment.
I've long suspected there's some kind of automation going on. I've written a number of inoffensive comments that shouldn't really cause a reaction from anyone, but the score goes down, then back up over a short period. Not sure why there would be an algo for that, but it feels like it.
I stopped calling myself a liberal in the 90s because I went to Europe for business a lot and liberal, funny enough, means conservative over there. I never really felt progressive fit—-too moderate, because it assumes all you have to do is sustain progress, but that speed isn’t crucial. And I am still on the far left but I feel less at home on the left since the shamefully misinformed reactions to the Simchat Torah massacre. I don’t support Israel’s far right government, but most of the people murdered didn’t either, and watching high school kids in Palo Alto chant a literal genocidal slogan was a wake-up call.
Except most likely it wasn't. An actual, "literal" genocidal slogan, that is.
The simple, boring fact is -- whatever import along those lines (that you see in whatever they were saying) probably wasn't what they intended it to have.
Most of the ones using it are simply, as you are correctly pointing out -- grossly misinformed.
For sure medicine for hormonal levels can help a lot. Doctors miss diabetes and people die so of course you are right that testosteron is probably missed. The difference is accessibility everyone can check if they have high blood sugar by themselves, bad testosteron levels though the symptoms are not as clear there most certainly is not a 50% correlation between the symptoms and what you push.
So what would have worked for your comment is an anecdote maybe talk about it as the low possibility it is.
I think you're right that people perceived a "sleazy" vibe. The sibling referred to "manosphere" and "advertising".
I wonder whether that reaction would have been different if the topic had been different. I.e. to what extent the reaction was due to the wording vs the subject matter. I think tesosterone treatment itself is seen as somehow sleazy, and I referred to that as a "stigma". I speculate that that perception has something to do with the fact that in 4 years I was never checked for an obvious potential cause to my symptoms. That experience is one reason I've chosen to be quite open about this treatment. I'd probably never have found it if it hadn't been for people I know talking about it.
I'm not sure it is a "low possibility", BTW. The prevalence and causes of hypogonadism aren't very well understood but it is common and may be rather more common since COVID. There are valid concerns about over-diagnosis, but under-diagnosis of this condition also carries risks.
It's an irrational response in many cases, and an ironic one in your case because what you wrote sounded decently reasonable, while i've seen other comments on other threads recommend all kinds of questionable nootropic and hallucinogenic drug therapies for X and Y reason, with no discernible downvoting. Those were "correct" I suppose.
Good idea: Don't write a comment with potential downvotes in mind. Use reasoned thinking, but also just say what you feel needs to be said and fuck the nitpicking you might get from pedantic idiots.
For me, I simply refuse to trade in the comment karma currency here. It’s so wishy-washy. I may post a comment or opinion that HN hates, but I am not going to self-censor an opinion on a topic I want to share just because I think might be HN controversial and receive downvotes. Also, I specifically want to read a heavily downvoted comment because often there are sometimes interesting takes in there. Also the dimming to me is annoying, it’s akin to shouting down a speaker rather than using reasonable debate and conversation to explore a topic.
Finally…I refuse to downvote any comment. Who am I to contribute to censoring a speaker for other people?
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-onset_hypogonadism :
> Testosterone levels are well-documented to decline with aging at about 1% per year in both men and women after a certain age; the causes are not well understood.
The condition I have could be late-onset hypogonadism (i.e. a slow drop over time) but based on the timing and nature of the onset of symptoms (and my age) is more likely to be a sharp drop in production following COVID. The difficulty in determining the latter for sure is that my levels before COVID were not known. This is also a challenge with determining the epidemiology of such sudden changes. Levels would need to be observed across the drop in a sufficient number of cases, but people are generally only measured after symptoms appear. Nonetheless, such drops are known to occur both due to injury and infection, and idiopathically.
Some things are systemic.
The issue with these kinds of discussions is people talk about “low T” without defining a specific number as low and normal.
That's why I'd recommend anybody to get their levels of testosterone and other hormones checked periodically, so that any sudden change can be identified (and perhaps we can collect data to better understand the epidemiology of such sudden changes).