[dlcarrier]

1,000 isn't that high for Hacker News. It could be someone commenting a few times a week for a year or two.

Unhinged is basically the default state for comments on any forum, and it's worse on many platforms like YouTube.

No one reads the article, they just see a topic, or maybe even infer one, and talk about whatever they want to talk about. There's no social clues in an online post, so it builds up from there.

[MichaelZuo]

I agree many online forums nowadays are filled with the unhinged, or even worse.

It’s still somewhat bone chilling to see on HN, and to see upvotes on that kind of verbal diarrhea.

Since it has a negative rub on effect on Y Combinator, so presumably they actually expend some effort to shut down the most deranged accounts.

If this is what we see… users looking like semi-random parrots… I shudder to think of those that were so deranged they in fact got mod attention.