I'm not sure it does. I think people use Elm to signal to fellow oldtimers that they were indeed around when people used that email client, DAE remember?

I'm not even sure I've ever seen a HN submission about the email client. And they're in such different niches that you, precisely, have to write a comment without clicking in to the article. At which point, what value are you contributing to the discussion?

You're basically suggesting that choosing a different name would increase the odds of someone being more relevant when writing a comment based on a submission title. Not very compelling. These comments just get downvoted where they belong.

One of the worst aspects of HN are top-voted arguments that have nothing to do with the subject matter of the article. We don't need more of those.