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Hyperbole tends to make people lose trust in the author and stop reading. It is in their interest to tone it down so that their point can be heard. A decent con

Hyperbole tends to make people lose trust in the author and stop reading. It is in their interest to tone it down so that their point can be heard. A decent contingent of people are sick of clickbait and tired of people using absolutes. I tend not to get too mad at people calling out silly behavior that has been normalized. The author here BARELY added anything to the articles the quoted. It seems the majority of the post itself is quoted text.

mattmaroon 3y ago
Hyperbole only makes people who don't know what hyperbole is lose trust. It's an obvious, unspoken thing between the author and reader here that he does not mean 100% but instead very close to 100%. The author was quoting (very much the blog version of a re-tweet), so yes, there was very little added. The headline came from what he was quoting. Perhaps it would have been better to title his post something better. Actually the linked post he was quoting from has a better title. But nonetheless, an 8 year old could read that post and know the "no one" was not meant literally, so why go into a comment section and respond to it? It just seems like garden variety "aaaactually" behavior which adds nothing to anyone's day, but is in every freaking HN post and makes you kinda hate the site you love sometimes. How much better would this place be without all of that? The truth is sure a whole lot closer to "no one" than to the urban legend, just as if someone said (pre-2020) "no one's letter got lost in the mail and anyone who tells you that happened was lying". A statement that is right 99.9% of the time is barely even hyperbole. The reality is (according to this article) that people everywhere think this happened, it didn't, it can be verified that it didn't via ship manifests, and people only think that because of a scene in a movie. That's what a 5th grader would take from reading it. Can we all just respond to that? It's an interesting claim.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  I just read the source article and it is even more definitive in its language and not using hyperbole. It explicitly states that anyone who believes otherwise is wrong and it’s even bolded by author for emphasis. This is why I prefer the absence of hyperbole and mostly chose not to engage with articles that deploy it.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    I mean, I’m not saying, I think the language was great or anything, just that it’s pretty obvious hyperbole, they obviously weren’t implying that nobody ever made a mistake, and coming in here and making comments like that just makes hacker news worse. And not only that, it happens on like every post several times

mattmaroon 3y ago

Hyperbole only makes people who don't know what hyperbole is lose trust. It's an obvious, unspoken thing between the author and reader here that he does not mean 100% but instead very close to 100%. The author was quoting (very much the blog version of a re-tweet), so yes, there was very little added. The headline came from what he was quoting. Perhaps it would have been better to title his post something better. Actually the linked post he was quoting from has a better title. But nonetheless, an 8 year old could read that post and know the "no one" was not meant literally, so why go into a comment section and respond to it? It just seems like garden variety "aaaactually" behavior which adds nothing to anyone's day, but is in every freaking HN post and makes you kinda hate the site you love sometimes. How much better would this place be without all of that? The truth is sure a whole lot closer to "no one" than to the urban legend, just as if someone said (pre-2020) "no one's letter got lost in the mail and anyone who tells you that happened was lying". A statement that is right 99.9% of the time is barely even hyperbole. The reality is (according to this article) that people everywhere think this happened, it didn't, it can be verified that it didn't via ship manifests, and people only think that because of a scene in a movie. That's what a 5th grader would take from reading it. Can we all just respond to that? It's an interesting claim.

nickthegreek 3y ago
I just read the source article and it is even more definitive in its language and not using hyperbole. It explicitly states that anyone who believes otherwise is wrong and it’s even bolded by author for emphasis. This is why I prefer the absence of hyperbole and mostly chose not to engage with articles that deploy it.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  I mean, I’m not saying, I think the language was great or anything, just that it’s pretty obvious hyperbole, they obviously weren’t implying that nobody ever made a mistake, and coming in here and making comments like that just makes hacker news worse. And not only that, it happens on like every post several times