Look, you started this by dismissing AirPods owners’ preferences as being primarily about signaling wealth. Frankly, most people find accusations like that pretty insulting.

It wasn’t me that made that comment! You’re getting me confused with another poster.

“Frankly, most people find accusations like that pretty insulting.” ;)

Like I said, I’ve been open minded. I don’t feel others have shown the same respect in return.

You're right. I was wrong about that. Sorry!

Also, FWIW, I haven't been downvoting you (I can't, since you're the first descendent on my responses).

EDIT: found the comment I had in mind:

> Indeed but I’ve got my own theories about what’s happening here and I think it’s less to do with people being open to alternative suggestions and more about protectionism of the Apple brand.

FWIW, my take is that people who enjoy the Apple brand proposition (spend more, but you'll generally get a very high level of attention to detail and things will mostly just work) are pretty sick of people who enjoy tinkering telling them that they're idiots for buying Apple. This comment of yours kinda gets into that territory by suggesting that people are downvoting because they're upset about challenges to the Apple brand (which is a petty and childish motivation) rather than they just don't share your priorities.

The thing is, I wasn’t saying Airpods owners (priorities) were wrong. All I was saying is that there is actually a glutton of devices that perform the same way as airpods do when a former poster suggest airpods were unique in the market. It’s a factually accurate post and it’s not critical of airpod owners. So getting downvoted for that kind of comment is weird and there’s literally no reason anyone would do this if it wasn’t for brand loyalty. I bet if this was a Bose, Sony or any other household electrical brand thread which wasn’t Apple, my posts would have been upvoted because that’s literally how those posts are received in any other topic on HN.

I’m sure if you look through other Apple threads you see a similar pattern of comments that aren’t negative nor factually inaccurate but still get downvoted too. I see it happen a lot on HN these days and frankly I’m sick of people abusing their voting privileges.