Nah, that's just reddit. At this point it's safer to take anything that's popular on reddit as either outright wrong or so heavily out of context that it's not relevant.
Oh, sure, I learned a long time ago that Reddit is a very reliable anti-indicator. But given that HN isn't nearly as bad (but there are moments), it's still strange that people would just repeat something about someone else that they could disprove for themselves in 30 seconds.