You know, a lot of people here look up to you. When you write stuff like that it has a lot more influence than when some newbie account does. I would probably say that the influence is negative, assuming HN is a thing that you care about.
After submitting I see that you changed your post. The link is not much better.
> I'm glad you approve. No, wait, I don't give a shit.
So someone asked if you've done work for the NSA. Who cares? Clearly you have the ability, it's not the most offensive thing in the world even if it's a bit naive. The person doesn't necessarily know that it's totally against your values, assuming that this is the source of the offense.
Good. I think this place would be better if we all had a more appropriate level of contempt for comments accusing people of being shills.
I'm not offended at someone suggesting I might have worked for NSA. You still don't get it.
(I changed the parent not because I'm uncomfortable with it, but because I wrote it before I saw the comment below that I ended up replying to; either "go fuck yourself" or the response I wrote downthread work for me, but both together seemed pointless).
You're offended because of the suggestion that your comment about the extent of free speech we have with respect to protesting the NSA might be motivated by your own previous work experience with the NSA.
Even if true, I wouldn't say this indicated you were a shill, because shills are generally paid to push propaganda.
People are naturally biased by their experiences in positive or negative ways. You made what could be construed as a pro-NSA comment in an environment dominated by anti-NSA sentiment, and somebody made an assumption that maybe you had a good experience working at the NSA and wanted to clarify it.
For what it's worth, it never occurred to me that you were a shill or a former employee, the suggestion is absurd and totally out of left-field.
Look at the comment at the root of this thread that kicked it off. No, that commenter did not infer that maybe I had an interesting experience at NSA that I wanted to share. My comment had nothing whatsoever to do with NSA. It's pretty clear what that commenter was trying to say. They can go fuck theirself.
Respectfully, not because I'm fed up talking about this but because I don't want to be one of those threads where 'pg has to comment and say "will you guys please stop", I'm going to leave it at that.
