[dividedbyzero]

> Just don't ever use a metaphor on Hacker News. People will always misinterpret it

I've always wondered why that is. No other community I'm active in insists so much on explicitly spelling out everything and very literal language – most will actually reward playing with language, if done well. Writing as if targeting Commander Data seems to work quite well though.

[bowsamic]

This might come off as projection, but in my experience, HN has a lot of people who pride themselves on their rationality, and part of this is giving off the image of never joking and always being serious. You can see this when people get mass downvoted for making jokes, which is also uncommon in other programming communities. Somehow this often spills over into metaphors as well as jokes. I think that jokes and metaphors are quite similar in that regard, both not to be taken totally seriously and/or literally. The HN insistence of being above jokes inevitably leads to being above metaphors.

[e63f67dd-065b]

Tech is known for being international, and even in the US is staffed with a lot of foreign-born labour. I don't find it surprising that a community with a high amount of non-native speakers sometimes misinterprets metaphors.