[jotaass]

Yes, but now is on the front page of Hacker News. They may just have ruined this guy's life, even if they didn't mean it. And based on what? The pictures prove nothing. In fact, they're not even suspicious! "Backpack seems to be missing"? The picture only shows his head!

This is bad, and very wrong.

[GHFigs]

Oh, please. It's on the front page of Hacker News because Hacker News is full of credulous idiots, not because talking about pictures is bad or wrong.

[mistercow]

Almost every top level comment is people being skeptical and urging caution. What were you saying about credulous idiots?

[GHFigs]

Said comments are completely non-skeptical about the provenance of the images or their actual significance. Because Hacker News never gets anything wrong, right? We're smart here, right?

No, actually. We average out to the same kind of mob-prone mooks we like to tut-tut at others for being. Except our mobs are about standing around going "Well, actually..." and that's marginally less puerile than what we see from 4chan mobs.

It might feel like skepticism, but from where I sit it looks a lot like pretentious pseudo-intellectual grandstanding. It's like hanging a somebody's napkin doodle in an art gallery just so you can complain that it's not the Mona Lisa.

[scarmig]

Well, someone's upvoting, and I'm guessing it isn't the cautious skeptics.

[mistercow]

Upvoting doesn't necessarily mean that you think that these are the guys responsible. It just means you think this is interesting. And it is.