Make sure you have showdead on. In this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6822578 he posted a comment (twice, not sure why) that ended up [dead] (also not sure why). He's not hellbanned, so that particular comment must have been either flagged repeatedly or killed by moderators. In either case, he blames PG personally for the comment being [dead] (which seems to fit his personality).
Yes, I'm sure Paul Graham cares so much about VC negativity that he personally killed this commentary. Also, close your blinds, I think there are black helicopters circling...
I doubt he personally killed it, given that it was instantaneous and happened around 5:00am Pacific time.
The reason it's of interest is that Hacker News has been assigning personal penalties to the posts of people who are critical of venture capital. This is just one episode in an ongoing campaign of nonsense.
I'm not upset about this stuff. It doesn't bother me. In fact, the degree to which I was personally targeted (my posts invariably appear below where they should based on votes and post age, but I still have a 5+ karma average) makes me happy. I just like to draw attention to it because it shows how obsessively PG is working to manicure the reputation of a pseudomeritocracy that apparently can't handle people saying bad things about it.
VCs are passive-aggressive little girls if they can't handle people telling the truth about them.
The VCs have basically filled technology with petty high-school drama. By funding people like Jack Dorsey and Evan Speigel, they're directly responsible for the toxic climate.
The fact that Paul Graham goes to extremes to manicure the reputation of the VC-funded ecosystem deserves attention. Why? Because it shows the underlying weakness of this system. Things that are strong can stand to have bad things said about them, because the truth favors them.
I investigated and those comments were autokilled. There are handful of phrases that cause comments containing them to be autokilled, and one is "circlejerk." I doubt we have lost any insightful contributions to HN by it.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 63.1 ms ] threadThe reason it's of interest is that Hacker News has been assigning personal penalties to the posts of people who are critical of venture capital. This is just one episode in an ongoing campaign of nonsense.
I'm not upset about this stuff. It doesn't bother me. In fact, the degree to which I was personally targeted (my posts invariably appear below where they should based on votes and post age, but I still have a 5+ karma average) makes me happy. I just like to draw attention to it because it shows how obsessively PG is working to manicure the reputation of a pseudomeritocracy that apparently can't handle people saying bad things about it.
VCs are passive-aggressive little girls if they can't handle people telling the truth about them.
I'm sure it matters to you, but I wish you'd take it somewhere else.
The VCs have basically filled technology with petty high-school drama. By funding people like Jack Dorsey and Evan Speigel, they're directly responsible for the toxic climate.
The fact that Paul Graham goes to extremes to manicure the reputation of the VC-funded ecosystem deserves attention. Why? Because it shows the underlying weakness of this system. Things that are strong can stand to have bad things said about them, because the truth favors them.
I was using it as metaphor, but I suppose that token is negatively correlated with post quality.