You're complaining that you can't shit on other people. I'm complaining that people don't shit on themselves.

It's the same problem. People are afraid to face reality, internally or externally.

The context is somewhat different on an anonymous online forum such as HN. Giving feedback as a stranger can be fraught with insufficient information. Criticism can easily spiral into negative flamefests full of assumptions of the receiving party. Thus, mods try to dampen it from getting too negative and toxic.

> So why is it any surprise that every startup company has precisely the same back-patting culture?

They are different because presumably coworkers are people you at least personally know in passing, and are not anonymous usernames.

We should be gracious to strangers but more critical to those whom we do know.

You’re doing the same thing now.

Valid, level-headed criticism isn’t “shitting on someone”.

> You’re doing the same thing now.

My wife does call me her favorite hypocrite :)

My statement was certainly an oversimplified assessment.

> Valid, level-headed criticism

This is a good clarification to make, thank you. Ultimately this is what I'm longing for more of in the world. "shitting on" either yourself or someone else isn't helpful.

You seem opened minded so here it goes.

The problem with this stupid website is I (or no one else) couldn’t even properly reply to you due to censorship.

I intended to write a sample of what actually “shitting on you” would actually be, but I knew the autistic mods would ban me just the same as if I was actually doing so because they lack the prefrontal cortex material responsible for comprehension.

So engaging with you, or really in any valuable conversation on HN, is an exercise in bad faith, everyone must always wrap themselves in a thick layer of bullshit to appease the gods above or else face sanction.

> The problem with this stupid website is I (or no one else) couldn’t even properly reply to you due to censorship.

You know you're welcome to make your own community, right? You're not actually being censored, you're just in a venue that doesn't support communicating how you'd like.

> I knew the autistic mods would ban me just the same as if I was actually doing so because they lack the prefrontal cortex material responsible for comprehension

You've succeeded in your goal of posting a sample of what actually shitting on someone looks like. Hint: it doesn't look good on you.

> So engaging with you, or really in any valuable conversation on HN, is an exercise in bad faith, everyone must always wrap themselves in a thick layer of bullshit to appease the gods above or else face sanction.

Engaging with society requires wrapping everything in a think layer of bullshit. Being able to show some restraint is what keeps things civil, because there's a wide range of social norms. Get a therapist and learn how to cope with it.

Again, you could also find or create another venue. You're not entitled to a platform.

Alternatively I could tell you to fuck off, because absolutely nothing about your statement is factual or fair in even the slightest.

People like you love to say shit like “well just go make you own platform”

Cloudfare will ban you, AWS will ban you, the investors that are poor fronts for private equity will ban you, it’s controlled. You won’t be able to take payments in your little rebel SaaS because Visa will Kneecap you.

You pretend that there’s some kind of free, open exchange of ideas where some free market determines what is popular and thus allowed for social discourse. Instead there’s the allowed discourse of the elite, which you freely participate in with glee, and worst of all you pretend you’re free.

So please keep simping like a good little serf. It does all of us good when we conform to what your institutional therapist thinks is “good” lol

There’s a big difference between the people in control of a company back-patting everyone when employees’ livelihoods are actually in danger, and back-patting an individual for sharing their personal projects and experiences in good faith even if they have a lot of room for improvement.

> "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of other HN users without being downvoted or reprimanded by dang.

These things absolutely can be said on HN, if you list some points that make you think so. If OTOH your comment ist literally just that one sentence then I don't see why it shouldn't get downvoted and flagged. This is not the YouTube comment section.

> These things absolutely can be said on HN, if you list some points that make you think so.

Only if what you say doesn’t oppose the current zeitgeist of the thread. I’ve seen some of the most well thought out and level headed comments get flagged to death while some insult floats to the top.

HN cannot escape the group dynamics that are universal to all gatherings of human beings, this is likely to have been true throughout the history of this site, even if to different extents.

There's a difference between being introspective and just being a jerk.

Did you just prove their point?

If their point is that they get mad because people would downvote "Your Show HN isn't really that impressive", then I guess so. I would certainly downvote that kind of comment, because it's pretty much by definition a jerky comment.

But I have seen tons of reactions to Show HNs that are "How is your product different from XYZ?" or "How will you address problem Foo?" Those comments actually bring something helpful to the discussion. I've also seen, in cases where the Show HN isn't something the community generally appreciates, get fair comments along the lines of "Your product just appears to make it easier to spam people. Why should we like this?"

Offering critical commentary without a point isn't something that adds to the value of the site.

No. You can provide constructive criticism without BS or say things in a meaningful way without diminishing people.

I wonder why so many people in this thread seem to see this topic either black or white.

I would not say that HN does this constantly or agree with much of what you write. In general I think written/upvoted comments tend to be biased towards being critical[1] and disagreeing with the comment/article being responded to.

In general, the guideline is for comments to be curious and “maybe you were a shit employee” or “your Show HN really isn’t that impressive” do not sound to me like they are curious. However I realise it is hard to describe in general comments that would surely contain specific things.

An alternative strategy to the former general comment might be to try to get curious about the details more. For example one might discover that the likely cause was a breakdown in communication leaving the employee unable to understand what was actually wanted and being fired for failing to read minds to meet expectations. However I think it can be hard to actually be curious here rather than applying some kind of smug-Socratic method[2] asking innocent-seeming questions where the answers lead to one’s unwritten hypothesis, though perhaps the answers can give an opportunity to update. I think it can be doubly hard to do these things in a kind way, especially when, like in the general examples, the topics are personal to one participant rather than a typical internet discussion where parties may pretend to be disinterested.

[1] There are two common meanings of ‘critical’. One is related to ‘critical thinking’ or critiquing: looking specifically and carefully at the faults or merits of something. The other meaning is similar to ‘disapproving’. Generally the former kind is accepted here and the latter is less accepted, though I think comments which are negative and not particularly thoughtful or curious often do better than I would hope. Further, the acceptance of the former kind of critical discourse may sometimes be hidden behind for comments that perhaps fit into the latter sense (when they don’t fit I would say it is because they are too mean to really deserve to be called critical).

[2] I think this roughly corresponds to what the guidelines call cross-examining.

Never really noticed posts about people getting fired and complaining. My impression is that the HN audience is generally pretty strict on work behavior.

"Oh, you slightly smiled when everyone else did not? Not appropriate, we are a serious and professional enterprise, you should be fired and restricted to ever work in this industry again."

That said, claiming the audience is or does something specific is probably always a large generalization.

"your Show HN really isn't that impressive"

On that I do agree. The criticism is often very direct. There is a certain aspiration that product or solution x must be either the best or it doesn't deserve to exist at all. On the other hand such criticism can still be valuable if it is still received as hinting to stuff that can improve.

I don't know if this was the meaning of the OP's message, but the way I read it tells me that he dislikes the "everything is fine" BS that some companies keep on doing, not the fact you still need to criticise constructively, which "your show hn isn't that impressive" clearly doesn't do.

Realistic, yes, but you don't have to be an ass, that's kind of how I interpret it.