I'm not sure one one can make their 'own' conclusions from reading that article it was clearly biased towards reaching the conclusion that Ayn Rand was a writer for 'juveniles' which I don't think is a fair appraisal. I mean I don't agree with her conclusions on the world but I would say the world she has created in her novels are at a higher level than juvenile reading.

Why, I enjoyed this article, particularly the part about rape and the end:

I seriously doubt that Donald Trump is really a fan of Ayn Rand. Her books may be juvenile and shallow, but they’re way too deep for him.

Make your own conclusions, indeed.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

Um, I only hope they don't give awards for that.

Salon is a very left-wing site, heavily opinion-based. You get about the same kind of thing when looking at opinion sites from any part of the political spectrum.

It's glorified trash talking really.

Hey, thanks for this link and sorry it got you downvoted by losers who can't take a rant like a man :p

This was probably the best response of all because it provides a plausible explanation why this started only recently. I mean, I swear I have never seen Rand mentioned on HN by anyone in any way until lots of people suddenly started making fun of her few weeks ago.

> I mean, I swear I have never seen Rand mentioned on HN by anyone in any way until people suddenly started making fun of her few weeks ago.

No, a group of people have been posting about Rand for years. Here's a thread from 8 years ago people on both sides of the like/dislike divide. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=427292

Here's a post with over 40 points that's just a quote from Atlas Shrugged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5860250#5860696

But I haven't seen these posts before so your argument is obviously invalid :p

I'm not saying that it never happened but that it wasn't the case that she was mentioned in every other flamewar about politics.

From hn.algolia.com, excerpts from all "Ayn Rand" posts in the last 10 days, except replies to these posts:

Was there ever a honest belief by anyone (except the Ayn Rand fanboys) this could work?

Yeah, that would be great in the Ayn Rand's fantasy land

I had a coworker who was a hardcore Ayn Rand type who had a real harsh point of view like this, until his infant was born with a congenital heart defect that resulted in hospitalization for 3-4 months. [this one actually isn't dumb]

HN is nothing but startup bros, armchair economists, and card-carrying Ayn Rand fan club members.

For an entire generation community-oriented principles, egalitarianism, collectivist ideas, and far-left leaders were demonized as Soviet sympathizers, replaced with rah rah unregulated capitalism, Ayn Rand-ian individualist, and military might. [tl;dr, might be reasonable]

Nobody cares about your Ayn Rand pablum anymore. Argue on morals that have any grounding at all in the real world.

They do all sound harsh!

I don't even care about harsh, fwiw I've barely suffered through maybe some 40% of The Fountainhead when I tried. What caught my attention was that most of these posts look like mindlessly repeated viral meme. Not that it's anything particularly unusual of course, but boring.