9 ms·

I wouldn't call OP's post "receipts", but rather "his curated receipts." What makes more sense? Some dude has been creepy and only showed the positive side in

I wouldn't call OP's post "receipts", but rather "his curated receipts." What makes more sense? Some dude has been creepy and only showed the positive side in his defense, or three random unrelated women -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason. I mean, the former case has a precedent for happening almost habitually in the past, you'd have to be willfully ignorant to ignore the context of the last several decades. EDIT: Not saying he's guilty, but I'm also not pretending we don't live in a world where institutions perpetuate and erase abuse. But the latter case deserves a response by the accusers. Unfortunately, if some guy walks up to a woman at an event and acts creepy, this demands that a woman record every moment of her life in case she has to defend herself if she calls him out... EDIT: Watching the points on this comment swing from negative to positive in the span of minutes is telling.

honkdaddy 5y ago
Here's an example[1], from his blog post, about the interaction one of these women defined as "creepy". If this is the bar for unacceptable discourse between men and women, without being a mind-reader, I'm not really sure how one is ever supposed to win. [1] https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2Fea67dec6-4d3f-4ae2-ba1e-4f4d8ed9cd1f%2FCleanShot_2021-02-24_at_17.34.242x.png?table=block&id=424cbc08-a995-4d2c-8348-6a382deef2c0&spaceId=4df35c39-cb11-4523-a7a4-2c68a3fecc57&width=3580&userId=&cache=v2 https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazo...
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  That's his receipt. Not hers. Is that really 100% of the interactions they've had? You seem to be pretty confident there's only his side of the story.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Then she should share receipt of the alleged creepy messages. The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused.
    - carabiner 5y ago
      Yeah, the only "evidence" brought by the women are screenshots from anonymous Twitter accounts with no proof they're associated with Pasquale. Surely someone must have a harassing message from the guy? Also, not proud of this, but I used to have a weird troll dating account. I sent weird messages to women that I didn't know, but nothing offensive (to me). I googled my username once and found that someone had thought it was her ex. She posted it on Reddit in an alcoholism subreddit, and anyone in the thread questioning her was then also accused by her of being her ex under an alt. It was insane.
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      Burden of proof for what? To charge him with a crime? Sure. But random people are free to make whatever conclusions about him that they want, with as little or as much evidence as they personally require to render their judgement. You don’t get to tell other people how they should form their opinions. It isn’t fair, but there is no other way for the world to work. Everyone has their own criteria for judging people... we can put legal requirements on some things (like what criteria you can use to determine if you hire someone, or rent them an apartment, or let them into your store), but people are free to dislike someone for whatever reason they want.
      - Manuel_D 5y ago
        > Burden of proof for what? For me to believe their accusations. It's not just something that exists in the courts, it's a principle that many (most?) people adhere to in their lives. If you have one co-worker who accuses the other of stealing their phone, would you punish the accused without first asking how they know they stole it or looking at camera footage of the time of the alleged theft? It's not illegal for you to believe unsubstantiated accusations (not just unsubstantiated, but unsubstantiated in the face of exculpatory evidence). It's not illegal for a boss to fire an employee over an unsubstantiated accusation. Legal, but still harmful to society.
        cortesoft 5y ago
        Punishment or firing is different than believing or not believing. I agree you should have a higher burden of proof before doing those things. But you are free to believe whatever you want. Personally, I don’t hold a belief either way about this person. I neither believe or disbelieve them.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    How would your perspective change, if it all, if the accuser came forward and said that those were in fact the only DMs exchanged?
bobsmooth 5y ago
Remember what happened to ProJared?
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  No I don't. Not sure what side of the arg ProJared is on. But I do remember what happened to Vanessa Guillén, and an entire military that tried to cover it up, and many, many others like her. (Should I enumerate GamerGate's victims and the way their real accusers said it was BS, when it wasn't?)
  - bobsmooth 5y ago
    Jared was accused by his ex of some shitty things, then a bunch of randos straight up lied about him to pile on. It's 40 minutes but he explains what happened to him here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBywRBbDUjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBywRBbDUjA
  - noobermin 5y ago
    Both things can be wrong. ProJared didn't victimize Vanessa Guillen so it's a category error to put the military cover up that happened with people lying about ProJared and him showing receipts on how he wasn't victimizing people.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  Isn't he the dude who cheated on his wife and solicited nudes from fans?
rkk3 5y ago
> three random unrelated women They may be unrelated but the events here weren't independent. He was accused of anonymously harassing someone thru a meme twitter account (actually run by someone else). This caused him to be virtually dog-piled. None of us know what would have happened without the initial false accusation.
bmmayer1 5y ago
My question is, why is this any of your (or my) business? Why do we feel it necessary to involve ourselves in a situation we have neither the context nor the authority to have an opinion?
- Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
  Because nature tells us : "Women are saying that a guy had an interaction with them" So all our brain emergency signals flare up. That's because somebody who is not ourselves having interactions with women triggers an immediate response...that guy is, in fact, an enemy from a reproductive standpoint. Deeply rooted in our brains there is the idea that WE should be interacting with those women and that we must destroy that guy because he's ahead in the reproductive race This happens subcounciously. Even standup guys like Bill Gates aren't immune to it, if you want to hurt a guy reputation and you have nothing, absolutely nothing on him...well just say that he's a playboy and a philanderer. If you claim those things you immediately ruin his reputation with women and with smart/family men. All he's left with the approval of less smart men who are no use for guys who have ambitious goals such as Bill Gates or even the Pasquale VC of the main article. They'd have lost so much "approval rating" among smart men, as well as men who are capable of reading the room and don't want to be associated with a guy who is under attack by the mob.
vhanda 5y ago
> Unfortunately, if some guy walks up to a woman at an event and acts creepy, this demands that a woman record every moment of her life in case she has to defend herself if she calls him out... We're throwing away "innocent until proven guilty" with this. I'm sure you agree how dangerous that can be. Though, as you point out, recording every moment is not feasibly or desirable. Do you have any ideas on how we could solve this problem? Making it easier and cheaper to file defamation suits wouldn't help as in this case there was no evidence.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  I think in most of these cases, the accusations are correct. But some of them aren't correct and we must protect the innocent as well. And me, as an outsider on the internet, has no business trying to pick a side or work out who should be punished. That's the job of the legal system.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Why do you think most accusations are correct?
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      The majority of people are not malicious and would not make this stuff up. Some obviously are and will but my feeling is that these people are the minority.
      - fastball 5y ago
        Not sure the math makes sense on that. Assuming a two-party interaction, for every person that makes a true accusation of abuse, there is one malicious actor (the abuser). For every person who makes a false accusation, there is one malicious actor (the accuser). Regardless of the ratio of true to false accusations, the number of malicious people in the world remains unchanged.
        5y ago
oh_sigh 5y ago
The women clearly aren't unrelated if they are referring to each other in their tweets about why so-and-so is a creep. If he is only showing the positive side in his defense, wouldn't it be super easy for anyone who received his creepy side to show it? If he says "these are the only DMs we exchanged", and then someone can show more DMs that were exchanged, wouldn't that destroy his defense? Yes, clearly the messages can be photoshopped, but if none of the accusers are pushing back against the claims, which would be simple to do, one could assume they are true.
exporectomy 5y ago
Don't judge people on what your emotions tell you is most likely what that type of person usually has a reputation for doing according to the selectively reported news. That's how racism works, or in your case, it's sexism.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  That's not at all how racism and sexism work. Racism and sexism depend on power imbalance, and calling out centuries of existence of either when exploring if there is a power imbalance at play is not related. Saying "This race is inferior" is vastly different than saying, "This race was and is still exploited by power structures." Do you understand difference?
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    The smallest, most vulnerable, most powerless minority of them all is the individual. So parent's point is still very relevant.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    For social media outrage, women seem to have more power than men (eg. this article), so your claims about men are sexist due to the power imbalance. I'll also demonstrate the equivalence of your statement to racism by changing some words: "What makes more sense? Some black person has been violent and only showed the positive side in his defense, or three random unrelated white people -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason."
    - zzzeek 5y ago
      all major social media companies are literally owned and run by men
      - exporectomy 5y ago
        Can you connect that claim with a conclusion using some logic? For example - and I know this probably isn't what you're implying but I don't know what it actually is - "They are run by men and the sex who's members run them is the one with the most power, therefore all men have more power than all women.
newacct583 5y ago
Exactly. Like it or not, accusers have the right to make accusations. Obviously all the predominantly straight, anti-woke men here are going to sympathize with the guy and other people won't. But at the end of the day, what's the solution demanded here? You shouldn't be able to call someone out for being an asshole? What about the people whose accusations are true?
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Just like any false accusation: it has to go to court. The truth is life is a fuckmess right now and there is no instantaneous black/white gratification. And if your success is predicated on a large social-media following, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do when it turns on you. At this point at least. Not to digress, but holy hell: I mean look at the fuckmess social media has created, of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Flat earth? Pizzagate? Q? For real?
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    > Just like any false accusation: it has to go to court What? This makes no sense. There is no crime being alleged here. No one is trying to send this guy to jail, so what would there be to try in court? Someone said this guy was creepy. Guy says he isn’t creepy and provides some evidence. Everyone is free to look at the situation and make their own judgement. The idea that we are only allowed to believe things proven in court is asinine.
    - newacct583 5y ago
      > Everyone is free to look at the situation and make their own judgement. Except people who believed the accusers. Those people are an "internet mob" who must be condemned. You forgot that part. Only the guy who wrote the blog post is supposed to be believed. It sounds like a joke, but there's a real "it's only bad to believe people without evidence when YOU do it" vibe to the posters here.
      - deleted 5y ago
ghostly_s 5y ago
You know, this seemed like an interesting case study right up until he quoted Scott Adam's take on "being cancelled."
- fastball 5y ago
  How come?
  - alsetmusic 5y ago
    Scott Adam’s says some pretty bizarre things in public on his blog and on his podcast. He wrote about causing his readers to orgasm via his words.[0] The tone was not that of a person with a healthy attitude towards sexuality. I found it unpleasant and gross. He’s also expressed some pretty odd ideas. From the same link: > Regular readers know that I used my background in hypnosis to accurately predict nine-out-nine political events in 2015, while most political professionals got zero right. That makes me the best political pundit of the year. The podcast QAnon Anonymous (which reports on conspiracy theories; it’s not pro-conspiracy thinking) did an episode about him.[1] It’s been a long time since I listened to it, so I won’t try to sum it up because I’d do so poorly. He came off as an unpleasant person who doesn’t seem admirable to me. I wouldn’t link to him in a post about character assassination. [0] https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/12/31/hypnotizing-you-to-have-the-best-new-years-day/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/12/31/hypnotizing-you-to... [1] https://m.soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/episode-43-scott-adams https://m.soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/episode-43-scott-ada...
    - njwi332 5y ago
      Even if you don't like Scott Adams (And I don't particularly like the guy myself), I don't think that should invalidate the specific statement that the article quotes, which should be able to stand on its own regardless of the background of the person saying it. See also: ad hominem, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/character-attack/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/character-attack/
dang 5y ago
> EDIT: Watching the points on this comment swing from negative to positive in the span of minutes is telling. Please follow the site guidelines. You broke the second-last one: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. (Btw, it's not "telling" of anything but that the topic is divisive, which we all know already.)
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Didn't know that. Won't do again. Thanks. Passionate topic.
  - dang 5y ago
    Appreciated!
- valtism 5y ago
  Hey dang. I think this post need to be taken down. I've followed this drama before and after reading a lot from both sides, it's pretty clear in my eyes that there is an ongoing harassment campaign from Pasquale. I was really shocked to see this getting so highly voted on HN. I think this post covers a lot of what is happening - https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mitchell-and-bhoka https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit...
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    Seconded.
  - austhrow743 5y ago
    Do you have something better to show harassment? That post doesn't appear to. As far as I can tell it's about an account that replied to people patting themselves on the back with clap symbols, which seems rather benign. Although I may just be too removed from twitter and people who use twitter culture to get it.
    - deleted 5y ago
newbie789 5y ago
I agree with your curiosity about this. I’ve noticed that the blog post doesn’t really dive into “what could have possibly caused this to happen?” so we’re all left to speculate as to what circumstances (if any!) led to this. It seems like quite a few comments are rather uncurious about that and have decided to focus on a phenomenon called “the mob” as if it were a monolith that manifests uniformly like the apparition of a bogeyman that’s entirely disconnected from cause and effect aside from going after the best and brightest.
908B64B197 5y ago
> or three random unrelated women -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason. Seems he dated two of them? I guess we all know who ended the relationship now. (hint: not them!)
kalkin 5y ago
There's quite a bit of irony in the number of HN commenters who are prepared to side with the OP instantly & without any apparent consideration as an innocent victim of... people online instantly & without apparent consideration siding with accusers. His story didn't quite add up to me - no explanation, even speculative, of why several people in his life, who he thought he was friends with, might suddenly decide to attack him - so I found this interesting: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mitchell-and-bhoka https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit... I don't have a lot of sympathy for VCs who have access to actual capital but feel like an anonymous Twitter account making fun of them is "punching down", and it's not obvious that the non-OP people in this story are all behaving well, but we don't have to pick sides here, and it seems like there's plenty of reason to be cautious about fitting this into a narrative about online "mobs" "lynching" innocent victims.

honkdaddy 5y ago

Here's an example[1], from his blog post, about the interaction one of these women defined as "creepy". If this is the bar for unacceptable discourse between men and women, without being a mind-reader, I'm not really sure how one is ever supposed to win. [1] https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2Fea67dec6-4d3f-4ae2-ba1e-4f4d8ed9cd1f%2FCleanShot_2021-02-24_at_17.34.242x.png?table=block&id=424cbc08-a995-4d2c-8348-6a382deef2c0&spaceId=4df35c39-cb11-4523-a7a4-2c68a3fecc57&width=3580&userId=&cache=v2 https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazo...

SavantIdiot 5y ago
That's his receipt. Not hers. Is that really 100% of the interactions they've had? You seem to be pretty confident there's only his side of the story.
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  Then she should share receipt of the alleged creepy messages. The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused.
  - carabiner 5y ago
    Yeah, the only "evidence" brought by the women are screenshots from anonymous Twitter accounts with no proof they're associated with Pasquale. Surely someone must have a harassing message from the guy? Also, not proud of this, but I used to have a weird troll dating account. I sent weird messages to women that I didn't know, but nothing offensive (to me). I googled my username once and found that someone had thought it was her ex. She posted it on Reddit in an alcoholism subreddit, and anyone in the thread questioning her was then also accused by her of being her ex under an alt. It was insane.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    Burden of proof for what? To charge him with a crime? Sure. But random people are free to make whatever conclusions about him that they want, with as little or as much evidence as they personally require to render their judgement. You don’t get to tell other people how they should form their opinions. It isn’t fair, but there is no other way for the world to work. Everyone has their own criteria for judging people... we can put legal requirements on some things (like what criteria you can use to determine if you hire someone, or rent them an apartment, or let them into your store), but people are free to dislike someone for whatever reason they want.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      > Burden of proof for what? For me to believe their accusations. It's not just something that exists in the courts, it's a principle that many (most?) people adhere to in their lives. If you have one co-worker who accuses the other of stealing their phone, would you punish the accused without first asking how they know they stole it or looking at camera footage of the time of the alleged theft? It's not illegal for you to believe unsubstantiated accusations (not just unsubstantiated, but unsubstantiated in the face of exculpatory evidence). It's not illegal for a boss to fire an employee over an unsubstantiated accusation. Legal, but still harmful to society.
      - cortesoft 5y ago
        Punishment or firing is different than believing or not believing. I agree you should have a higher burden of proof before doing those things. But you are free to believe whatever you want. Personally, I don’t hold a belief either way about this person. I neither believe or disbelieve them.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  How would your perspective change, if it all, if the accuser came forward and said that those were in fact the only DMs exchanged?

bobsmooth 5y ago

Remember what happened to ProJared?

SavantIdiot 5y ago
No I don't. Not sure what side of the arg ProJared is on. But I do remember what happened to Vanessa Guillén, and an entire military that tried to cover it up, and many, many others like her. (Should I enumerate GamerGate's victims and the way their real accusers said it was BS, when it wasn't?)
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  Jared was accused by his ex of some shitty things, then a bunch of randos straight up lied about him to pile on. It's 40 minutes but he explains what happened to him here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBywRBbDUjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBywRBbDUjA
- noobermin 5y ago
  Both things can be wrong. ProJared didn't victimize Vanessa Guillen so it's a category error to put the military cover up that happened with people lying about ProJared and him showing receipts on how he wasn't victimizing people.
bigbillheck 5y ago
Isn't he the dude who cheated on his wife and solicited nudes from fans?

rkk3 5y ago

> three random unrelated women They may be unrelated but the events here weren't independent. He was accused of anonymously harassing someone thru a meme twitter account (actually run by someone else). This caused him to be virtually dog-piled. None of us know what would have happened without the initial false accusation.

bmmayer1 5y ago

My question is, why is this any of your (or my) business? Why do we feel it necessary to involve ourselves in a situation we have neither the context nor the authority to have an opinion?

Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y ago
Because nature tells us : "Women are saying that a guy had an interaction with them" So all our brain emergency signals flare up. That's because somebody who is not ourselves having interactions with women triggers an immediate response...that guy is, in fact, an enemy from a reproductive standpoint. Deeply rooted in our brains there is the idea that WE should be interacting with those women and that we must destroy that guy because he's ahead in the reproductive race This happens subcounciously. Even standup guys like Bill Gates aren't immune to it, if you want to hurt a guy reputation and you have nothing, absolutely nothing on him...well just say that he's a playboy and a philanderer. If you claim those things you immediately ruin his reputation with women and with smart/family men. All he's left with the approval of less smart men who are no use for guys who have ambitious goals such as Bill Gates or even the Pasquale VC of the main article. They'd have lost so much "approval rating" among smart men, as well as men who are capable of reading the room and don't want to be associated with a guy who is under attack by the mob.

vhanda 5y ago

> Unfortunately, if some guy walks up to a woman at an event and acts creepy, this demands that a woman record every moment of her life in case she has to defend herself if she calls him out... We're throwing away "innocent until proven guilty" with this. I'm sure you agree how dangerous that can be. Though, as you point out, recording every moment is not feasibly or desirable. Do you have any ideas on how we could solve this problem? Making it easier and cheaper to file defamation suits wouldn't help as in this case there was no evidence.

SilverRed 5y ago
I think in most of these cases, the accusations are correct. But some of them aren't correct and we must protect the innocent as well. And me, as an outsider on the internet, has no business trying to pick a side or work out who should be punished. That's the job of the legal system.
- fastball 5y ago
  Why do you think most accusations are correct?
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    The majority of people are not malicious and would not make this stuff up. Some obviously are and will but my feeling is that these people are the minority.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Not sure the math makes sense on that. Assuming a two-party interaction, for every person that makes a true accusation of abuse, there is one malicious actor (the abuser). For every person who makes a false accusation, there is one malicious actor (the accuser). Regardless of the ratio of true to false accusations, the number of malicious people in the world remains unchanged.
      - 5y ago

oh_sigh 5y ago

The women clearly aren't unrelated if they are referring to each other in their tweets about why so-and-so is a creep. If he is only showing the positive side in his defense, wouldn't it be super easy for anyone who received his creepy side to show it? If he says "these are the only DMs we exchanged", and then someone can show more DMs that were exchanged, wouldn't that destroy his defense? Yes, clearly the messages can be photoshopped, but if none of the accusers are pushing back against the claims, which would be simple to do, one could assume they are true.

exporectomy 5y ago

Don't judge people on what your emotions tell you is most likely what that type of person usually has a reputation for doing according to the selectively reported news. That's how racism works, or in your case, it's sexism.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
That's not at all how racism and sexism work. Racism and sexism depend on power imbalance, and calling out centuries of existence of either when exploring if there is a power imbalance at play is not related. Saying "This race is inferior" is vastly different than saying, "This race was and is still exploited by power structures." Do you understand difference?
- zozbot234 5y ago
  The smallest, most vulnerable, most powerless minority of them all is the individual. So parent's point is still very relevant.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  For social media outrage, women seem to have more power than men (eg. this article), so your claims about men are sexist due to the power imbalance. I'll also demonstrate the equivalence of your statement to racism by changing some words: "What makes more sense? Some black person has been violent and only showed the positive side in his defense, or three random unrelated white people -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason."
  - zzzeek 5y ago
    all major social media companies are literally owned and run by men
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      Can you connect that claim with a conclusion using some logic? For example - and I know this probably isn't what you're implying but I don't know what it actually is - "They are run by men and the sex who's members run them is the one with the most power, therefore all men have more power than all women.

newacct583 5y ago

Exactly. Like it or not, accusers have the right to make accusations. Obviously all the predominantly straight, anti-woke men here are going to sympathize with the guy and other people won't. But at the end of the day, what's the solution demanded here? You shouldn't be able to call someone out for being an asshole? What about the people whose accusations are true?

SavantIdiot 5y ago
Just like any false accusation: it has to go to court. The truth is life is a fuckmess right now and there is no instantaneous black/white gratification. And if your success is predicated on a large social-media following, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do when it turns on you. At this point at least. Not to digress, but holy hell: I mean look at the fuckmess social media has created, of disinformation and conspiracy theories. Flat earth? Pizzagate? Q? For real?
- cortesoft 5y ago
  > Just like any false accusation: it has to go to court What? This makes no sense. There is no crime being alleged here. No one is trying to send this guy to jail, so what would there be to try in court? Someone said this guy was creepy. Guy says he isn’t creepy and provides some evidence. Everyone is free to look at the situation and make their own judgement. The idea that we are only allowed to believe things proven in court is asinine.
  - newacct583 5y ago
    > Everyone is free to look at the situation and make their own judgement. Except people who believed the accusers. Those people are an "internet mob" who must be condemned. You forgot that part. Only the guy who wrote the blog post is supposed to be believed. It sounds like a joke, but there's a real "it's only bad to believe people without evidence when YOU do it" vibe to the posters here.
    - deleted 5y ago

ghostly_s 5y ago

You know, this seemed like an interesting case study right up until he quoted Scott Adam's take on "being cancelled."

fastball 5y ago
How come?
- alsetmusic 5y ago
  Scott Adam’s says some pretty bizarre things in public on his blog and on his podcast. He wrote about causing his readers to orgasm via his words.[0] The tone was not that of a person with a healthy attitude towards sexuality. I found it unpleasant and gross. He’s also expressed some pretty odd ideas. From the same link: > Regular readers know that I used my background in hypnosis to accurately predict nine-out-nine political events in 2015, while most political professionals got zero right. That makes me the best political pundit of the year. The podcast QAnon Anonymous (which reports on conspiracy theories; it’s not pro-conspiracy thinking) did an episode about him.[1] It’s been a long time since I listened to it, so I won’t try to sum it up because I’d do so poorly. He came off as an unpleasant person who doesn’t seem admirable to me. I wouldn’t link to him in a post about character assassination. [0] https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/12/31/hypnotizing-you-to-have-the-best-new-years-day/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/12/31/hypnotizing-you-to... [1] https://m.soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/episode-43-scott-adams https://m.soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/episode-43-scott-ada...
  - njwi332 5y ago
    Even if you don't like Scott Adams (And I don't particularly like the guy myself), I don't think that should invalidate the specific statement that the article quotes, which should be able to stand on its own regardless of the background of the person saying it. See also: ad hominem, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/character-attack/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/character-attack/

dang 5y ago

> EDIT: Watching the points on this comment swing from negative to positive in the span of minutes is telling. Please follow the site guidelines. You broke the second-last one: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. (Btw, it's not "telling" of anything but that the topic is divisive, which we all know already.)

SavantIdiot 5y ago
Didn't know that. Won't do again. Thanks. Passionate topic.
- dang 5y ago
  Appreciated!
valtism 5y ago
Hey dang. I think this post need to be taken down. I've followed this drama before and after reading a lot from both sides, it's pretty clear in my eyes that there is an ongoing harassment campaign from Pasquale. I was really shocked to see this getting so highly voted on HN. I think this post covers a lot of what is happening - https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mitchell-and-bhoka https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit...
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Seconded.
- austhrow743 5y ago
  Do you have something better to show harassment? That post doesn't appear to. As far as I can tell it's about an account that replied to people patting themselves on the back with clap symbols, which seems rather benign. Although I may just be too removed from twitter and people who use twitter culture to get it.
  - deleted 5y ago

newbie789 5y ago

I agree with your curiosity about this. I’ve noticed that the blog post doesn’t really dive into “what could have possibly caused this to happen?” so we’re all left to speculate as to what circumstances (if any!) led to this. It seems like quite a few comments are rather uncurious about that and have decided to focus on a phenomenon called “the mob” as if it were a monolith that manifests uniformly like the apparition of a bogeyman that’s entirely disconnected from cause and effect aside from going after the best and brightest.

908B64B197 5y ago

> or three random unrelated women -- who he claims only ever had lovely, adoring exchanges with him -- decided to destroy his life for no apparent reason. Seems he dated two of them? I guess we all know who ended the relationship now. (hint: not them!)

kalkin 5y ago

There's quite a bit of irony in the number of HN commenters who are prepared to side with the OP instantly & without any apparent consideration as an innocent victim of... people online instantly & without apparent consideration siding with accusers. His story didn't quite add up to me - no explanation, even speculative, of why several people in his life, who he thought he was friends with, might suddenly decide to attack him - so I found this interesting: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mitchell-and-bhoka https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit... I don't have a lot of sympathy for VCs who have access to actual capital but feel like an anonymous Twitter account making fun of them is "punching down", and it's not obvious that the non-OP people in this story are all behaving well, but we don't have to pick sides here, and it seems like there's plenty of reason to be cautious about fitting this into a narrative about online "mobs" "lynching" innocent victims.