[s1artibartfast]

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.

[fnordsensei]

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.

[s1artibartfast]

Case example:

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

[fnordsensei]

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.