I would never have downvoted it to 0; it wasn't a 'bad' comment needing censure. But, when it briefly reached +3, I just tried to downvote it, and hit upvote by mistake instead. Oops! So take that as a hint as to how arbitrary individual votes are, and why you shouldn't worry too much about them.
Why didn't I want your long grandparent "quick comment" to be a +3 or higher?
At one level, you almost seem to be implying "that nasty Bush and people like him are why Arrington was spit on, and now heroic Obama will fix everything". I think that's a simplistic and unhelpful worldview. (It doesn't even help Obama to treat him like a superhero.)
You vent a laundry list of grievances with the past 30 years. Well, if you want to write hacker-themed analyses of 'casual sex', 'classism', 'internet harassment', 'homophobia', 'racism', 'so-called "irony"', the 'heartless health insurance system', or anything else, more power to you. But using the labels as shorthand slurs about how 'barbaric' our current 'era' is just makes the discussion partisan, impressionistic, and emotional. You're pressing buttons, and such threads degenerate quickly.
Finally, while I was born before your 1980 cutoff when things started to go bad, I imagine most of the participants here have spent their whole lives in what you call "a barbaric era of unbelievable interpersonal nastiness." I can imagine them taking issue with that characterization, now and in the future when "people look back".
Why didn't I want your long grandparent "quick comment" to be a +3 or higher?
At one level, you almost seem to be implying "that nasty Bush and people like him are why Arrington was spit on, and now heroic Obama will fix everything". I think that's a simplistic and unhelpful worldview. (It doesn't even help Obama to treat him like a superhero.)
You vent a laundry list of grievances with the past 30 years. Well, if you want to write hacker-themed analyses of 'casual sex', 'classism', 'internet harassment', 'homophobia', 'racism', 'so-called "irony"', the 'heartless health insurance system', or anything else, more power to you. But using the labels as shorthand slurs about how 'barbaric' our current 'era' is just makes the discussion partisan, impressionistic, and emotional. You're pressing buttons, and such threads degenerate quickly.
Finally, while I was born before your 1980 cutoff when things started to go bad, I imagine most of the participants here have spent their whole lives in what you call "a barbaric era of unbelievable interpersonal nastiness." I can imagine them taking issue with that characterization, now and in the future when "people look back".