As someone who has been seriously depressed from an early age, I can tell you that it looks exactly like the DSM/ICD criteria - a lack of energy, loss of appetite, loss of interest in all activities, insomnia, feelings of worthlessness, suicidal thoughts and pervasive sadness and hopelessness.

Some people would rather believe that pediatric depression isn't real, rather than confront the reality of a loved and cared-for child who is constantly tearful, severely underweight, sleeps for three or four hours a night, spends most of their time staring into space and frequently talks about wanting to die.

Depression is an utterly dreadful illness and should not be confused with normal sadness or unhappiness.

Probably something like Boy Interrupted[0]. Sad story and something I can sympathize with having some of the same feelings very early on despite having a rather normal upbringing and siblings not showing signs of it.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Interrupted

It's incredible that my last four comments are down voted to -1, for engaging in genuine dialog across topics.

@dang it's hard to believe that I'm not being brigaded.

And several of your comments before that were upvoted. Are we to regard those as suspicious?

Of the recent downvoted comments, one was a complaint about moderation that anyone who has paid attention to dang's track record here over more than a decade knows is baseless. (And if you think the top comment on any thread is a bad one, you can always choose to be a helpful contributor to the community and email us to let us know).

Of the other two of your downvoted comments, none were downvoted by the same users.

The choice is yours to make an effort to observe the guidelines and be a positive contributor to HN, or alternatively to keep using HN for political/ideological battle and complain to the moderators when things don't go your way, but it's clear what others in the community want to see.

I've scanned your full list of comments and can find plenty that have an ideological flavor to them, and others that are in the flamewar style, but are not so clearly related to politics/ideology. I'm not interested in getting into an argument about which of your comments are ideological or not. That's not the issue. What is the issue is the hostile and inflammatory style of commenting towards other community members and HN as a whole.

It's notable in this instance:

- You posted a series of comments about controversial topics, having established a history of participating on HN with this persona of being a brave combatant for, I don't know, some worldview or philosophy that you seem to be fighting for;

- When a handful of your comments receive even a solitary downvote, you call in "the cops" (dang) to come to your aid, with a claim of "brigading";

- When we investigated and found that, no, there's no "brigading", some of those comments are not even net-downvoted anymore, and that any downvotes you're getting are to be expected given your combative style of commenting, you've responded with these incoherent attacks on moderation/moderators.

Whether we all agree that many of your flamewar-style comments really are, in fact, political/ideological, is not the point and seems to be a way for you to deflect from being held to account for your conduct.

What I'm saying to you is that people who care about making HN better have all kinds of ways of showing it, and it begins with making an effort to observe the guidelines, and it also involves engaging respectfully with other community members and the moderation system. We are always, always working to make HN better and our moderation approaches better, and we always welcome and engage with feedback, as dang has been doing with you in another subthread today. But we've both been doing this job long enough to sense when someone isn't really wanting to help make HN better at all.

> What is the issue is the hostile and inflammatory style of commenting towards other community members and HN as a whole.

Please.

> having established a history of participating on HN with this persona of being a brave combatant for, I don't know, some worldview or philosophy that you seem to be fighting for;

What? Just because I have a different worldview than you, doesn't mean I am fighting for or am a brave combatant of anything. But it's extremely telling that you think that, and revealing about your own views. And furthermore troubling that you are a moderator here.

Maybe you should read up on the clustering phenomena wiki and understand your own personal biases a little more.

> I have a different worldview than you

You don't know what my worldview is or what dang's worldview is and honestly I don't know what your worldview is and this is never relevant to how we moderate HN. We want HN to be a place where difficult topics can be discussed and all perspectives can be represented. That's what we optimise HN for, with the caveat that the guidelines foremost ask us all to "be kind" in comments. It's notable that you keep complaining about some kind of "bias" without being able to point to any evidence for your claims, and that all of your comments in this subthread ultimately resort to ad hominem. If there was any substance to your claims you would have presented it by now. The entire history of HN submissions and comments is available for anyone to download and analyse.

Let's be clear what's going on here: you've claimed to be a victim; you can't demonstrate exactly how you've been made a victim; when we investigate your claims, which we've taken time to do in good faith, we find that, no, there's no evidence for your claims of victimhood; when we tell you that, you respond with ad hominem attacks.

Please just observe the guidelines like everyone here is expected to do.

I've been here on this account for five years. Making me out to be some kind of serial complainer and self-proclaimed victim, of which I've done exactly twice across a litany of diverse and continued conversation and dialog on this website is ludicrous.

Your continued aggressive dismissal of milquetoast commentary against your moderation style is offensive.

Your characterization of my posts here as a warrior championing some cause is similarly offensive.

Your words, not mine:

> ... having established a history of participating on HN with this persona of being a brave combatant ...

How kind, and full of good faith.

You clearly feel something towards my worldview. Your language is charged, you have opinions directed at me. To be clear: I don't care about you at all. But I do find it amusing to watch such a visceral reaction to a general commentary, "the mods are biased, and shape the bias of this website."

You initiated all this. We've investigated and considered all your claims, established them to be unfounded or baseless, and still you keep going.

Your worldview is irrelevant to this discussion. This place’s entire worth is built on the fact that a broad range of worldviews and discussion styles is represented, and our moderation philosophy is intended to allow everyone’s worldview to be fairly represented.

We're responding to your claims only because if there is any basis to them we want to know so we can address any issues and reform the way we operate. We’re actively working to do that continually. But it’s increasingly clear that none of your claims hold up to any scrutiny and every additional comment just generates more noise and still no signal.

My advice as a long time participant here: pay no attention to upvotes or downvotes. Sometimes they seem to be completely unrelated to whatever you said. Stay curious.