It's analogous to pointing out that the #1 trait that successful founders have in common is family wealth - it causes people to have to look into their own privilege, and it ain't pretty.

I've noticed this as well, and on a few occasions it's caused me to cut down on my participation here.

Looking at the comments on this story, at least, I'm not seeing it. Most downvoted comments are from those disputing the study, or "what about men?" etc.

I find the opposite - I've been on HN around a decade, a few months ago, during a discussion on living in SV I mentioned that the valley is a cultural wasteland. dang said this was a 'slur' and not acceptable on HN.

The idea that it's unacceptable to criticise the culture of an area, and that people need to be protected from this idea, would be unthinkable on Startup News.

The whole point here is to have more signal than noise, and it's usually successful. I made a similar comment a few years ago about another geography and got a similar response. It gave me pause.

Reflecting on it, the way dang and others handle these things is right, if you have a point, you can make it without making an insulting generalization and characterization.

If you don't, at the end of the day, whatever point you try to make is wiped by the visceral response.

I'd be surprised if dang or others took offense to saying "Ohio is a cultural wasteland".

Removing all color from speech makes the world a very boring place.

Criticising bay area culture is not a 'slur' and saying that is more inflammatory than the original statement.

Can't both be true? Are these actually opposites?

It's because HN prides itself on "civility". So you can "innocently", "just to be fair", "playing the devil's advocate", "but what about" say any offensive thing you like, and when someone who's sick of hearing that bullshit uses a naughty word they get downvoted for being "uncivil".

The rest of the internet figured out long ago that such behavior is actually pretty toxic, and is called "sealioning" [0][1]

[0] http://wondermark.com/1k62/

[1] footnotes. It's all civil if you have footnotes.