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> Happy to be downvoted into negative territory. I see another comment on top doing the same. Why do people start with this? If you don't bother you should not
by anthropodie 6y ago
> Happy to be downvoted into negative territory.
I see another comment on top doing the same. Why do people start with this? If you don't bother you should not even brought that up. Seems like an underhanded way of getting more points. Do people even fall for this?
- screaminghawk 6y agoYes. It's a common pattern on reddit (and probably other sites) to let people know your intentions, thoughts and feelings to give context to the content of your post
- renewiltord 6y agoIt's a very effective meme. Like most such memes, it worms itself inside, and the vehicle doesn't consciously know of its presence. These people aren't thinking "I'll do this. It'll get me votes". It is unconscious mimetic memetics, if you will :) Some of these memes become elevated into conscious actions. For instance, people cynically exploit "Linux can't do X" to get help for X. But some memes are unconscious and I think "I'll be downvoted for this" or "Get out of here with your facts and reason" or "Source?" are definitely examples of these. Personally, I think many of the privacy and security comments are also memes that propagate through mimicry of success, but that's its own thing.
- rtrdea 6y agoI was with you til the last sentence. Have an upvote
- renewiltord 6y agoHaha, that was unnecessarily controversial on my part. I can totally accept that other people disagree on that.
- floydnoel 6y agobut you didn't even add the requisite "go ahead and downvote me!"
- 1123581321 6y agoThey’ve just fallen in with a different meme that makes comments attractive to a different set of users.
- renewiltord 6y agoYes, indeed! I can certainly tell you that post The Selfish Gene I have been entirely enamoured of the concept of the meme. I find it very elegant. If that isn't a brainjack, I don't know what is.
- Mitzi 6y agoWould you mind elaborating on which privacy and security comments you think propagate as memes?
- edem 6y agoI happily downvoted just because of this.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- olalonde 6y agoIt's against HN's guidelines. I systematically downvote any comment that does it.
- Igelau 6y agoFor most other topics, I'd probably agree. In the case of crypto currencies it's important to point out that you'd rather hear compelling counterarguments rather than the all too frequent "You're right but I wish you weren't" downvotes.
- samatman 6y agoI have a personal policy, which, if treated as a Kantian imperative, would eliminate this. Any invitation to downvotes, I take. Any comment about downvotes, means at the least that I won't upvote that comment. Meta-comments about downvotes are exempt, I would probably upvote this comment if I saw it from someone else. Every person who adopts this policy improves the discourse by discouraging this behavior, please consider it!
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoKant's second imperative is great! However, people wanting feedback beyond mere downvotes is legitimate and downvoting without comment is the actual wrong here IMO. IMO the best scheme here is that you _must_ provide a reason to downvote. People who vote for your reason [ie they agree with you about downvoting the parent] should be the actual downvotes. This way instead of apparently arbitrary downvotes one gets a list of reasons with scores (HNs score hiding aside, though they'd still be ordered) indicating their relative worth as reasons for downvoting. That is actionable. Under K2I that would allow everyone to tailor their contents to the audience if they wished, or at least understand the audience's approbation. tl;dr I downvoted you ;o) ... except I didn't because your comment has value even if I disagree !
- samatman 6y agoI agree that the downvote mechanism on HN could use some refinement! Funny thing, when I went to quote the specific HN guideline, I'm almost certain it used to say "Please don't comment about downvotes. It never helps" or something very much like that. But the current guideline says: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Which we're all in violation of! I'll do my best to follow this rule in the future.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoIt's a request, not an interdiction ;o). I find it occasionally illuminating to discuss meta-aspects but as a general rule the site guidelines are sensible.
- guardiangod 6y agoFor the last 4 months I auto down vote whenever a post mentions 'downvote me', then I read the comment and see if it merits unvote. So far I have reverted only once on HN.
- byset 6y agogiven how much HN hates bitcoin, it's curious that anyone would assume anti-bitcoin boilerplate would get downvoted here
- Aunche 6y ago> Do people even fall for this? According to OP's comment, it has received 76 - 11 = 65 karma as of now.
- anthropodie 6y agoHaha. We need to spread awareness man.
- Aunche 6y agoI actually have a lot of problems with Bitcoin, but I think that low-effort upvote-bait is seriously stifling productive discussion.
- ryanSrich 6y agoIt's a reddit technique to gain more fake internet points.
- patcon 6y agoYes, adversarialist sentence fragments are examples of thought-porn that does very well on HN :)