
Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives - cobrausn
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/swimming-in-a-sea-of-shit-the-internets-war-against-creatives
======
zalzane
I think this is a good article, but it was a mistake to start out by citing
Fish's situation. Fish is absolutely not an innocent player in this scenario.
He would fill his twitter feed with rage-filled comments in reply to people
who would criticize his game. By giving trolls exactly what they wanted (a
reaction), more of them jumped on the bandwagon to harass him.

Combine that with Fish regularly telling people to go suck a dick, kill
themselves, and all sorts of disgusting garbage littering his twitter feed,
and you have a character who is extremely easy to vilify and incite others to
harass. Of course, more people harassing him means that he replies with even
more caustic comments, making him even easier to vilify and dislike. I've seen
firsthand people trying to start hate machines on boards like 4chan's video
game board where they make collages of all the disgusting things phil fish
says in order to get more people to harass him.

Anyone who has ever dealt with bullying in their life can tell you that the
absolute worst thing you can do is react to it. If every ugly comment someone
made went into a black box and was ignored, it's very unlikely that they would
continue to post.

~~~
ceol
Fish responding to trolls in no way excuses the trolls harassing him. That's
textbook victim blaming, and it's disgusting for it to come up here.

~~~
ANTSANTS
Ok, here's Phil responding to a polite and honest question (in person, and not
over the safety of the internet!):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw)

You can argue that no one ever deserves to be harassed online, but I think
you'd have to be utterly oblivious to continually act that way in public and
not expect to be hated.

~~~
ceol
Yes, Fish has said some shitty things. Back when that happened, I was one of
the people who argued against him and said he was a huge dick. But that
doesn't mean he deserves a flurry of abusive and hateful speech; it means
people should tell him to shut up and learn some manners.

Surely you agree there's a difference between "being disliked" and "being on
the receiving end of a torrent of abuse"?

~~~
feeenix
I think, in many ways, Fish's situation is a combination of the "perfect
storm" of abrasive personality put into a situation where trolls can take
advantage of that personality.

I don't think anyone will say that Fish is a saint; he's certainly no Notch,
or Gaben, or Tim Schafer. And I worry that a large portion of the hate that is
directed at him is /because/ he's not someone who can take things in stride.

I think what a lot of people who get accused of "victim blaming" are
insinuating is that, if Fish could have taken criticism more in stride -- or,
you know, been respectful of other people when they ask him legitimate
questions -- when they were more innocuous and less extreme, then it might not
have gotten this far. It's like he threw gasoline on a small fire and is
bewildered at why his house is now burning down around him.

Does he deserve it? Not at all; /nobody/ does. But perhaps we shouldn't all be
so surprised at it when you try putting out a fire with gasoline.

------
moot
I should syndicate my 4chan inbox somewhere. 10 years of "FAK U FAGET" has
left me with a mountain of wonderful e-mail.

~~~
mapgrep
Then I'll try and be a little more civilized here: Along with some nice
things, 4chan is also a notorious breeding ground for some of the worst and
most noxious media and hateful activity (e.g. harassment campaigns) on the
internet. This has continued to be the case for many years. It doesn't seem
much has changed.

Don't you feel any responsibility for the behavior of your users?

[http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-
assh...](http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-
your-fault.html)

~~~
Udo
I think it would be a mistake to equate the worst of /b with 4chan as a whole.
What would _you_ do to control /b in this situation (short of shutting the
whole site down)? Maybe providing a dedicated outlet for the destructive
elements of a community is a good idea overall, kind of like hellbanning on HN
if you think about it, except that hell-banned people can interact with each
other and voluntarily retreat to their own forum.

~~~
dragontamer
Shut the subsite down is an effective option. Let the people know they aren't
welcome at 4chan.

GameFAQs had their LUE exodus, 4Chan can have their /b/ exodus. In the case of
GameFAQs, the rest of the site was able to focus more on gaming and it was
better as a result. On the other hand, if 4Chan wants to be home to that
element of the internet, they are welcome to do so. But I think at this point,
it is fair to judge 4Chan on their acceptance of /b/, much like how I judge
Reddit on their handling of clopclop and jailbait.

Nonetheless, companies built on top of community discussions have to face the
facts, people will come, they will be assholes. Its a problem that any
discussion-based company has to solve.

I understand protecting "Freedom of Speech", but lines have to be drawn at
some point.

~~~
zalzane
There's a not-so-well known secret about 4chan that can't be glossed over when
considering these kinds of things.

On 4chan, there's 5-10 boards that are implicit "cancer filter" boards. These
boards are used to curate the community and prevent undesirable users from
leaking into higher quality boards. The cancer filter boards serve as the
public face of 4chan; /b/, /v/, /mlp/, and a handful of other boards are used
to divert the attention of the unwashed masses to prevent contamination of
higher quality boards. Desirable users will start their 4chan experience on
one of these cancer boards, come to the conclusion that they're low quality,
and move on to a different, usually non-cancer filter board.

Because of this filtering process, the demographics on each board vary wildly.
Recently someone ran a statistical survey on several boards (n=~100/board) and
found that the average age of users on cancer-filter boards was around 17-19,
with the age increasing as you got to other boards. IIRC the average age on
the niche hobbyist boards was between 23 and 25.

What this means is that if you were to just remove /b/ tomorrow, all those
angry violent users are just going to leak into the other boards, and turn
them into another /b/. Now instead of one "problem" board, you have a dozen.

The tldr here is that while most forum websites have a unified demographic
across sub-forums, 4chan does not. Nuking the board won't get rid of
problematic users, it will just displace them to another board.

~~~
dragontamer
Indeed, and this is the same strategy that Reddit uses to "contain" clopclop
and jailbait.

And yet, we look at other communities such as StackOverflow or Gaia Online,
and while there are some issues... none of them are quite as bad as how the
worst of 4Chan or the worst of Reddit can get.

------
null_ptr
That's what we get for breeding a society of consumers. If you don't have a
meaningful way to express yourself productively, you pour all that tension
into the wrong things. You become a buly, a stalker, a heckler, you name it.
You get worked up about your experiences with other people's creative output,
instead of channeling all that energy into your own endeavours.

I think the world would be much better off if we encouraged everyone of all
ages to develop creative hobbies, instead of spending all their leisure time
passively consuming the work of others. Then they would all gain a better
perspective on the whole creative process and feel more accomplished all
around - and happier for it!

~~~
tks2103
I'm not sure that the responsibility lies with people or society at large.

Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to
attempt creative works?

Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not possible
for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill himself?

I believe that individuals making death threats or rape threats on the
internet are generally making individual choices with full knowledge of the
repercussions. I do not believe they have any reasonable excuse justifying
their actions. The responsibility for understanding and identifying how deeply
they can damage another human is solely theirs.

~~~
null_ptr
_" Do you believe people on Twitter do not have the resources available to
attempt creative works?"_

They do, but they're overwhelmed by the vast amount of empty content ready for
consumption. It's so damn easy to chill out clicking this and that, and fall
in a rut where that's all you do in the leisure time you spend at your desk.
We should try to find a way to actively encourage people to pick up a creative
hobby (or more than one!) as a form of therapy, even.

 _" Furthermore, do you believe that, without being creative, it is not
possible for a person to refrain from telling a game designer to kill
himself?"_

I think outbursts like that come from immature, intellectually under-developed
people who would grow immensely from pursuing a creative hobby.

~~~
tks2103
My greater point was that I don't think "we should actively encourage people
to pick up a creative hobby" in response to those people making death threats.

There are already people who are choosing to pick up creative hobbies. Those
people make games. People that make games get crucified by gamers who do not
like their decisions. Those gamers make death threats.

The people who make death threats can easily enough make something creative.
Certainly there is no larger barrier for them when compared to someone like
Phil Fish. I do not think we need to make it easier to expect better behavior
from someone who is making a death threat.

We need to prioritize the people who made the extra effort to actually get up
and make something over the people who chose to directly threaten the lives of
the creator.

------
Fuzzwah
I was the front man for a HL2 mod called Dystopia. We never made it big, but
we did have a decent sized, vocal and opinionated playerbase. I'd done my best
to promote a positive community and for the most part all the feedback we
received was fairly civil. I'm not trying to say that my experience was
anything like what Fish and the guy from Treyarch have had to deal with.

With those caveats out of the way; when I did have to deal with abusive
feedback, I focused on two things:

1) I could easily separate my real life person from the "Fuzzy" persona I
cultivated on the internet.

2) If our little game had prompted someone to get so worked up that they were
going to rape and kill my kittens because we were making changes to a weapon,
then we'd done something right.

I'd been a hardcore, vocal gamer before I had to deal with hardcore vocal
gamers. I wasn't abusive, but I had felt that passion from both sides. I
didn't like, tolerate or condone people who were abusive, but I tried to
understand where the passion was coming from.

~~~
ncallaway
I think this attitude is a healthy one to view the abuse from. It's very
unfortunate that this is necessary, though. It's great that you've made a game
that people can get passionate about, but it's very depressing to me that
people can't find an avenue to express that passion without resorting to
violent threats.

When the threats start talking about in person interactions (looking for your
address, etc), I think the situation gets even more serious.

As a side note, I played and loved Dystopia. It's a fantastic mod, and really
fun to play. Well done, there!

~~~
Fuzzwah
Shucks :)

As an aside, my best buddy, lead Dys programmer and co-project manager Teddy
is now hacking around with Oculus Rift things:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSoj9EU7pWs)

------
drhayes9
FEZ is among my favorite video games of all time. I believe that it is a
perfect expression of a 20-something's love of video games, a game mechanical
representation of spiritual enlightenment, and a fiendish hedge maze of
fractally spiraling content all at once. I played the _hell_ out of that game,
all the way to the end with every secret (rare for me), and devoted many pages
of a notebook to walking that hedge maze. Truly a great work of art.

I have tremendous respect for Phil Fish, but I would never want to work with
him. His kind of passion, devotion, and energy would probably chew me up and
spit me out so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. And, yeah, he gives as good
as he gets in the Land of the Trolls.

But, _man_ , he made a helluva game. Right now I'm selfishly hoping that the
need to create overwhelms the desire to heal and we'll see another few games
out of him before too long.

------
CanSpice
This needs to be paralleled with the story of Caroline Criado-Perez, who
campaigned to get a woman to replace Winston Churchill on the ten-pound note.
After it was announced that Jane Austen will be on the ten-pound note, Criado-
Perez received "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours."

This sort of abuse isn't limited to creative people. It's endemic. Make a
stand on something, anything, and you run the risk of having people say
they're going to rape you, your family, and your dog. It's really quite
horrible. Luckily for Criado-Perez Manchester police arrested a 21-year old
man on "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours." Lucky for her,
but unfortunately there's an entire sea of horrible people out there to sling
the shit.

~~~
DamnYuppie
Did that actually pass? People actually believe that Jane Austin is more
worthy then Winston Churchill? I love her books but come on....

~~~
IvyMike
There's an informal tradition of rotating through people about every ten
years.

~~~
DamnYuppie
That makes more sense then. Who is on our notes does not change often so I
guess I was predisposed that this was a bigger deal then it really was.

------
Silhouette
I expected this to be a piece about on-line piracy. In reality, it is about
something that can be much worse.

It's profoundly disturbing that so many people have such a lack of perspective
that they can seriously threaten violence against someone and their family
just because that person did their job and tweaked some game mechanics.

Sure, most of the abusive people are probably kids, but that's no excuse. What
kind of kid is old enough to be allowed unsupervised access to the Internet
and yet so out of control that they can think this kind of behaviour is
acceptable?

Some of the things described in this piece are surely criminal, but somehow I
get the feeling that sending the cops round would just be a badge of honour to
people who've gone that far off the rails already. I'm not sure how you fix
this without change on a society-wide scale, and I'm not sure how you could
even start to effect that change if you're in the the kind of position
described in the article.

~~~
sp332
Phil Fish _also_ told one of the YouTube personalities to go kill himself. I
think he's part of the problem.

~~~
MBCook
He was quoting Futurama (which he did _not_ note).

Either way, responding to hate with more hate doesn't mean it's OK to continue
the death threats.

~~~
cube13
I fail to see how this is a defense in this context. Given the rest of the
tweets, it doesn't seem that Fish was joking in any way, shape, or form.

~~~
kennywinker
The Futurama line is satirical: pompous robot says obviously cruel and pompous
thing. Quoting it, assuming the other party recognizes that it's a quote,
keeps some of the original humour and makes it into more of a sassy put-down
than a literal "you should kill yourself".

For instance, if I say "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" I'm
not ACTUALLY saying we should nuke anything. I'm actually quite against the
use of nuclear weapons.

~~~
cube13
Except there's no humor, implied, or otherwise, there. Just malice.

And honestly, the phrase "nuke it from orbit" is a rather exaggerated phrase.
Unless the speaker is Barrack Obama or Vladamir Putin, it's a pretty good
assumption that they are incapable of performing such an act.

However, "look at my life and go kill yourself" is much less exaggerated.
Bender gets a pass when he says it because it's used in a comedic context. In
real life, there is just about no point where that is a socially acceptable
thing to say, except, perhaps, in a Futurama quote competition.

~~~
nilliams
>> However, "look at my life and go kill yourself" is much less exaggerated

I believe Fish actually used the full quote too "compare your life to mine and
then kill yourself" [1] .

Also, have you seen the abusive rant that Fish was responding to? It was this
GameTrailers panel clip, 1min 50 [2]. I was appalled, it _was_ a character
assassination.

Beer called Fish a "fucking hipster," a "tosspot," a "wanker", a "fucking
arsehole" and was dismissive of his game [2]. For some reason it's _fucking
hipster_ that gets my goat the most as that is just a _pathetically lazy_
insult to throw at someone creative.

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/27/4563738/fez-ii-abruptly-
ca...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/27/4563738/fez-ii-abruptly-canceled-
after-developer-phil-fish-explodes-in-rage)

[2] [http://www.gametrailers.com/full-
episodes/roj70m/invisible-w...](http://www.gametrailers.com/full-
episodes/roj70m/invisible-walls-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink)

------
HCIdivision17
It strikes a note of insanity: someone makes something, and another tries to
bully them. There can't be a goal in mind, since there doesn't seem to be any
pay-off. Fez was a hugely fun game, with layers of secrets and depth. And now
we'll likely not see another... Because of what? The game guy's a jerk? We're
surrounded by jerks that do nothing, and we tolerate them. I wonder if this is
just an extension of GIFT [1], but instead of general online abuse, it's now
aimed at the people building that entertainment infrastructure.

[1] [http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](http://penny-
arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

------
mwfunk
I think it's just what happens when you're exposing yourself to potentially
hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. From that sample size, there
will always be a lot of abusive idiots, even though they might reflect a tiny
fraction of the total audience. That small percentage can end up dominating
the conversation because of the nature of (most) electronic communication.

Unfortunately the medium itself is such that someone who is an abusive idiot
is a gazillion times more likely to go out of their way to contact you or post
something than someone who actually has something meaningful to say. The same
goes for online forums and mailing lists. There's just a natural bias towards
people posting extremely negative/inflammatory/abusive things. There's also a
natural bias towards the people who have the least to contribute being the
most likely to hop in with a comment, because they're the ones most likely to
have strong kneejerk responses that they just have to share with the world
right away.

To make matters worse, there's some sort of signal:noise entropy dynamic.
Anyone who was into Usenet in the 90's or has followed the same online
community over the course of many years has probably seen this. Online forums
tend to get worse over time, and never ever ever get better, aside from
attempts to impose moderation which always meet with strong resistance. It
seems like one lousy comment (or commenter) breeds two more, which drive away
the good commenters (meaning, people who actually try and don't just post
knee-jerk responses to things). This is how things like YouTube happen.

~~~
panacea
I think it's incumbent on reasonable people to occasionally leave a positive
comment, or send a short thank-you email to developers or creatives who have
made something you've found enjoyable, useful or helpful.

I do.

"Do unto others, as you would have them do to you" is sage advice that's often
forgotten.

------
daemonk
In a way it's unfortunate that Phil Fish is becoming the poster child for this
issue given his controversial public persona. I am not sure if people can dis-
entagle his reputation from this real issue.

~~~
ncallaway
In a legal setting, it's often true that to protect civil liberties you end up
defending...less popular characters. Protecting first amendment rights often
means protecting people whose speech you strongly disagree with.

Perhaps the same is true of a social setting. In order to argue and campaign
for more civility, you will necessarily be defending people most likely to
fail to earn that civility.

------
williamcotton
Part of making anything and telling the world about it is sticking your neck
out. The absolute worst thing is making something that ends up having no
impact.

When you do make something that garners some attention you need to realize
that a lot of people will be jealous. Their only valid rebuttal would be to
make something that is better than your thing.

People don't say these things to your face because on top of being jealous,
they are also cowards. The fear that drives their life is the reason why they
never make anything in the first place.

If you make things that are a bit more intelligent and refined you won't
attract the kind of idiots who are gonna post a bunch of mindless crap on
Internet message boards... but then you might have to deal with a very
intelligent and refined review from a noted critic. But no worries, as Frank
Zappa summed up brilliantly:

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

Just make stuff. Haters gonna hate.

~~~
jonny_eh
I totally agree. But I think the main reason people don't admit that they're
jealous is because they don't even realize it themselves.

------
eshvk
I am confused; why do you, as the creative person, _need_ to tell the world
about the death of a family person or if you are getting married (Looking at
you, Neil Gaiman)? Why has this become a thing? Why can't you STFU, get off
twitter/facebook/whatever social network and go do your creative thing?

~~~
ncallaway
Yes. How dare you use social media in a way that other humans do! If you
contribute anything in the public space, social media should be nothing more
than a marketing tool.

I am, like you, infuriated that a public / marginally public figure would use
social media to communicate a personal message. These marginally public
figures should only be allowed to talk about their creative output in a public
space.

/s

Edit: I guess the general point my unnecessary sarcasm was trying to make was
this: Creative people are _people_ first and foremost. They have the same
drives and desires for using social media, AND they need to use it as a
marketing tool. I think one of the major problems is it's super easy to
dehumanize people when you're interacting with them over the internet. They
aren't _just_ content creation machines.

Apologies for the unnecessary sarcasm.

~~~
eshvk
I am not clear what your point is. Are you saying that it is a normal human
instinct to broadcast all your shit to the world? Just because a few people
think that cultural consumption should work like that, doesn't mean that
everyone does think the same way.

~~~
ncallaway
> "Are you saying that it is a normal human instinct to broadcast all your
> shit to the world?"

To some extent, yes. Death in the family and informing people about an
upcoming marriages are things that I frequently see people post on social
media. Really any very important event in someone's life often gets posted on
social media.

I'm just saying, it's easy to think of people on the internet as _abstract
things_ , and not realize that you're saying: "Hey, _actual person_ shut about
about that major event in your life, no one cares, get back to work".

Let me ask you this: if your friend posted a message about a death in their
family on twitter would your response be "Why can't you STFU, get off twitter,
and get back to work"?

~~~
eshvk
> easy to think of people on the internet as abstract things,

Right. You mean it then becomes easier to be a major sarcastic dick to someone
who voiced an opinion quite contrary to yours?

~~~
ncallaway
I do. And I'm sorry for my sarcasm. It was inappropriate. Hence the earlier
edit to my comment calling it unnecessary and apologizing for it.

It was a knee-jerk comment, and it was indeed a pretty dick thing to say.

------
GVIrish
The Internet has a way of returning negative behavior ten or even a hundred or
a thousand fold. Phil Fish has a decently long history of negativity and
insults and that's what he received back in spades.

I find a lot of people who are dismissive, arrogant, condescending, and
insulting often can't take that same behavior directed back at them. Fish
seems to fit that mold.

I certainly wouldn't equate Phil Fish's situation to that of David Vonderhaar.
Vonderhaar got harassed for merely doing his job. Fish got harassed because he
crafted a persona of jerkiness.

------
tsotha
This doesn't have anything to do with anyone's "war on creatives" (ugh, I hate
that word). _Anybody_ who rises to even minor prominence on the internet is
going to get abuse. Sure, it's game creators, but it's also cat bloggers and
people who make instructional language videos. It's athletes and politicians.
It's anyone who whose name has bubbled to the top of a news cycle.

------
dotoiii
You people are amazingly irritating. Why do you believe that whenever a person
disagrees with you it's "trolling"? Fez was a truly terrible game, and Phil
Fish a terrible influence on videogames. He, and many people like him, are
transforming videogames into something truly horrifying. I can elaborate as to
why if you wish.

------
speeder
I make games, and the few "abusive" comments I received were obviously from
astroturfed competitors.

Maybe because although I am a caustic person, I never go around telling people
to kill themselves, or suck my dick, or other "wonderful" things that some
people like to do.

Also my games usually don't feature violence.

------
norswap
I have a hard time considering "bullying" on the internet or "smear campaign"
a real issue. I just think "just ignore the suckers". As long as you do have
people behind you as well as opposing you, it should be alright.

Maybe the problem is that, having never been in the situation, I don't really
understand how it feels. It really makes me wonder how I'd hold up in the
situation.

~~~
purplelobster
You're 22 and you think you know anything you piece of shit. Just fucking kill
yourself you fat french fuck, you deserve to die so just do it or else I'm
gonna find you wherever in france you are and I'm gonna rape your family and
make you watch, then kill you slowly.

How's that? That's pretty difficult for me to write, but about sums it up what
these people have to deal with several times a day. I do not blame Phil Fish
for lashing out, if people weren't on him like flies in the first place he
probably be less agitated.

~~~
norswap
Too obvious, made me smile :)

There might be a bit of desensitization involved, think 4chan culture.

Still, a stranger or the internet, or simply a stranger, does not mean
anything to me if I don't know him beforehand.

I also would like to clarify that I do not doubt that this kind of abuse it is
hard to deal with or anything. Just saying that it is pretty hard for me to
relate, and that's probably the reason why not everyone is immediately siding
with Phil Fish and other abuse victims.

------
skylan_q
Where have all the grown-ups gone?

------
Sickle
this isn't a war on creatives. this is a war on phil fish, who's probably been
the most annoying, condescending, gopher-hybrid moron-baby in recent history.
phil fish and his ilk can get fucked and go be forgotten as if he ever did
anything of note. calling this a "war on creatives" is patently ridiculous,
and only those who suck his dick because he's some kind of over-hyped indie
messiah would make this overgrown child's "take my ball and go home" stunt
into some horrible crime of undeserved victimization.

~~~
veytastic
Exactly. The video game industry needs to take a hard look at itself as to why
they are trying to justify victimization and criticize "cyberbullying" when
Fish has acted exactly like the trolls they criticize.

------
gnarbarian
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPIcV6zsPw)

It's not like Phil fish never asked for it.

------
dvt
Obviously people on HN aren't quite aware of who Phil Fish is. Try reading the
forums over at TIGsource where you'll see that the general sentiment (in the
indie community) is that he's a pompous douche and general asshole who
probably should not have been even featured in the indie game documentary that
came out 2 years ago.

What's happening to him is shitty, true. He also has done shitty things to
people in the past. One does not justify the other. However, my only point is
only that the indie community (talking about devs/designers/artists) as a
whole would rather have him gone.

------
mmanfrin
What a terribly example for an article about bullying to lead with. Bullying
is bad, but Fish _bullied others_ and contributed in the vitriol.

------
unkoman
What a fucktard

------
asdasf
Phil wasn't just "swimming in a sea of shit", he was shitting in the sea of
shit and splashing it at other swimmers. He is not some innocent victim, he
has consistently been an abusive asshole. The fact that people responded in
kind isn't wonderful, but it also isn't shocking.

~~~
pmarsh
I find it interesting that his twitter icon is Andy Kaufman. An artistic troll
if there ever was one.

------
CleanedStar
First world problems...right now the US is arming Syrian rebels so more
Syrians can get blown to bits. You're surprised that the culture perpetrating
atrocities around the world like that would also hurt the feelings of some
upper middle class white "creative type"? Let me break out my violin. What
happened, you opened up the window of your ivory tower and didn't like what
wafted in? Take off your rose-colored glasses and take a look around you.

~~~
veytastic
You have the right idea. Really puts it into perspective, when these people
act like their on a moral crusade defending a upper middle class assholes
because he got mean comments from other middle class assholes.

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kreutz
Haha bullshit. I submitted this hours before and it got nothing.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6122743)

~~~
Slackwise
This isn't Reddit. (Thankfully.)

