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by fnordsensei 894 days ago
I agree, for the purpose of scholarly dissection of the subject, it’s perfectly fine.

My point was that lining it up by calling it “BS” invites counter arguments, which is what happened here. If you’re not happy to implicitly accept the “BS”, you’ll have to address it.

Dropping the “BS” label would have led to a more focused discussion. It matters _how_ you ask a question.
1 comments
s1artibartfast 894 days ago
I see your point and agree that clarity may have helped. I read "BS" a little differently, as acknowledgement that all of the Elon stuff is a shambolic mess.

It also seems to be the case that some people didnt just disagree with the BS classification, but fundamentally disagree that anything besides Elon is a valid topic of conversation.

IT does matters how you ask a question, but some people will reject or change the topic no matter how you ask it.

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fnordsensei 891 days ago
Right, it might read as "Musk's bullshit" or "the bullshit aimed at Musk." Either way, the ambiguity doesn't help. It might tick off both Musk-huggers and Musk-whippers, depending on how they read it.
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s1artibartfast 894 days ago
Case example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38848821

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fnordsensei 891 days ago
Comes off as abrasive IMO. Someone might as well reply "I don't care that you don't care" then. You're more likely to get a good response from cutting all of that out and just leaving the meat: "I want to know about the current ROI for Twitter advertising, in standard marketing metrics."

The abrasiveness picks up in your replies. It comes off as if you went in looking for a fight. I don't know if you did or not, but the quality of the response reflects the attitude in which your question was posed. In my opinion.

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