It all started with people on twitter referring to HN as "the orange website", usually along with a screenshot of a particularly abhorrent yet not uncommon comm

It all started with people on twitter referring to HN as "the orange website", usually along with a screenshot of a particularly abhorrent yet not uncommon comment. Thus the "true colors" pun. But you're right that it's fundamentally about having an artifact. Many people are mad about "startup culture" and how it's affected the places we work and the things we love to do, and HN is a big part of how that culture is reproduced. That very real-world effect IMO makes "exit" insufficient; just black-holing the domain or whatever solves nothing.