With some effort, I can sort of understand how one might have that reaction. But the tl;dr is that there's history here that makes it all tragically plausible.

With some effort, I can sort of understand how one might have that reaction. But the tl;dr is that there's history here that makes it all tragically plausible. More specifically: 1) The persona "Near" was relatively new, following a partial "infosuicide" with respect to their previous pseudonym (which involved a degree of detachment from singular achievements in SNES emulation and preservation benefiting projects ranging from Snes9x to MiSTer to Analogue Super NT), which ties into the fact that 2) invective against Near has been an ongoing phenomenon for literally decades. Many people in the broader SNES emulation scene considered Near's pursuit of console-compatibility (for hacks/translations) and console-accuracy (for emulators) to be a kind of counterproductive pedantry rather than a contribution to the field. From there, it spiraled into a vicious cycle of Near being exploited as a "lolcow", a tradition with a long and ugly history of disproportionately preying on the insecurities of people who hold on to earnest desires to contribute to society despite being marginalized for being neurodivergent and/or gender-nonconforming. 3) marcan is, in the grand scheme of things, uncommonly credible. He's well-known as part of multiple ambitious reverse engineering efforts (e.g. Team Twiizers/fail0verflow, OpenKinect) and is known for his no-bullshit approach to a wide variety of infosec and opsec issues. His word carries well-earned weight to people who follow those scenes. (NB: I'm not here to debate any of these points with you. I'm simply injecting some background. Please don't confuse yourself as to what's happening here.)