The larger point I was making with my comment -- which seems to have been insufficiently clear -- was precisely that making extreme statements to trigger deliberately contentious argument is a style of interaction I prefer to avoid. Per the HN rules of conduct, I assumed good faith and interpreted the parent in the most favorable light I could, given it bordered on trolling. What is there to argue? The idea that there's a simple binary split between The Establishment and Nihilists?
Really?! I've seen plenty of trolling in my day, and that didn't ring any of my alarm bells.
Is it really that bizarre to you to call anti-establishment /r/wsb gamblers "nihilistic"? The ethos of the subreddit is basically "eh, screw it, let's see what happens" so is it that hard to imagine a subset of members going a little further, to "eh, screw it, none of this matters"?
Do you need a hand? You seem to be on a slippery slope. I've heard this one before - it was a single cannabis cigarette at first, but soon he was out there killing grandmas for drug money.
