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I'm sure you didn't intend this, but your comment is strongly reminiscent of this classic Russian political tactic for dealing with criticism from the west: htt
by phpnode 5y ago
I'm sure you didn't intend this, but your comment is strongly reminiscent of this classic Russian political tactic for dealing with criticism from the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- smoyer 5y agoI didn't intend it ... and it looks like I probably shouldn't have gone reminiscing in an HN comment!
- morganvachon 5y agoHN tends to have waves of (for lack of a better term) "troll hunters" who come here with an attitude that everyone here is commenting in bad faith and must be called out for it. They will do it to commenters from all sides of an argument, even in cases like this where it was clear your comment was simply remembering a past event and not intended to be anything else. I haven't figured out if they mean well and are just sorely misguided, or are actually trolls themselves here from places like Reddit where such bad faith activity actually happens in every single post.
- smoyer 5y agoI'm not in it for the karma and don't worry about being down-voted when I'm writing a thoughtful but perhaps contrary comment. Sometimes (like now) it teaches me that I'm out of step with the "mood" of the commons. That's fine too.
- morganvachon 5y agoRecognizing a somewhat similar incident from one's own country's history is not at all "whataboutism", especially when there was no obvious intent to diminish the impact of the original subject or otherwise distract from it. Not every comment on a web forum is an attempt to argue or act in bad faith.
- phpnode 5y agoYou're right of course, at the time of writing there were only 2 comments in this thread, and both were along the same lines which made the effect seem more pronounced.