The author suggests he's disconnected from reality, because everything he says is only possible because he can afford it. In fact, soylent didn't permit him any of this, except possibly the ability to afford to live like this in the first place.
That, understandably, is harder than usual for the HN community. Dismissing the article as "bitter" or "angry", as many comments on this page are doing, is hardly a refutation, and comes off as tit-for-tat bitterness and anger. Furthermore the HN community has no problem with bitterness and anger when it aligns with the ethos here. For example there's plenty of anger at government regulation, or at GitHub's new Code of Conduct[1].
Another example is this community's reaction to charges of sexism within tech culture. While many HN commenters agree that this is a real problem, many commenters here and on other tech publications again label women as "bitter" and "angry". To me that's very troubling.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005473 (I would love to hear your opinions on this issue on this thread.)
The author of the article is essentially just lambasting someone that wrote from quite an abrasive and privileged (and often factually problematic) perspective in a blog post. And conflated it with both soylent the company and "tech" and "hipster" culture. And he basically tells them they're going to die because they're out of touch and will be put up on the wall in a firing line.
I find it hard to read that kind of bombast fairly, and even putting that aside, really don't find any kind of insight in the article whatsoever.
I think that's the key. You see a conflation, and I see the connection.
(FWIW I voted up your comment even though we disagree. I appreciate your good faith.)
Soylent is a meal replacement that can feed people a meal for under $3. With a year long shelf life. That's a pretty impressive product (I know one can diy and careful plan one's own "perfect" meal, but many won't, and many can't). The use of algal oil as a major source of macronutrients is _huge_, in environmental terms as well as our ability as a species to distribute sustenance to everyone. The personal choices of the founder really don't concern me. The value judgements the author uses to make his point just hurts the point itself.
* Soylent _is_ liberating in a lot of ways, as are any other meal replacement.
* It's still possible to love food and enjoy human contact, even while eating it for every planned meal.
* Because he wants to get rid of his kitchen doesn't mean you have to.
There's kind of a pernicious implication that soylent isn't "manly" enough (gendered language used by me for effect here; it's not incidental). Real men know how to grow food and hunt food and cook it over an open fire! You're all going to die because you relied on Soylent! You are not a real human being, you are a robot!
I mean, I got carried away at the end there snarking back at the author, but that's exactly my point. How helpful is this snark other than as a rhetorical tactic to fill up space and manipulate people's points of view?
Why can't we all, like, live and let live, dudes?