That reasonable people feel the need for anonymity to even comment on such a topic is an example of 'vicarious outrage culture' becoming destructive through second and even third-order effects.<p>Another example is how some people expressing their opinion about Joi Ito engaging with Jeffrey Epstein were lambasted for not criticizing Ito enough (second-order effect). Even if we ignore what happens to Richard Stallman when he bumbles in with a comment suggesting Ito may not be that bad of a guy, look at what happens to those who condemn Stallman and Ito but in so doing point out that Stallman is an uber-nerd, well-known to have no human interface and possibly on the spectrum (third-order effect). Some of those folks are roasted online and even doxxed for the sin of not condemning Stallman enough and for even suggesting facts which might serve to put some context around Stallman's behavior.<p>The blast radius of vicarious outrage reaches from "Epstein --> Ito --> Stallman --> Commenters about Stallman" which is getting ridiculous. BTW, I'm giving even money odds that someone here on HN responds negatively about me for not criticizing someone (or everyone) in that chain enough, thus adding myself as another link to the chain for making a meta-meta-(meta?) observation about the situation.
Title has a mistake. The abbreviation of “venture capitalists” is “VCs” or “VC's”, not “VCS”.<p>I see this same mistake often on Hacker News. Does the site automatically make this “correction”?