You broke the site guidelines egregiously with this comment. Posting insinuations like this without evidence (no, patterns that you think you see in downvotes are not evidence) is seriously against the rules here, for reasons I've explained hundreds if not thousands of times over many years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

I feel like "egregiously" is a little unfair, absent an aggravating factor. However, you're absolutely right, I'm absolutely wrong, and I apologize. This was an emotional and low-effort comment and I wish I could take it back. Mea culpa.

You're right - "egregiously" was excessive. Sorry about that bit and thanks for the open-minded reply. That is rare in cases like this so I appreciate it.

It is a very contentious discussion, and it seems like a lot of half-educated people are sharinng opinions. The way I understand it, today's population of Taiwan largely want to be an independent state, and all those uncreative jokes about ROC being the real China actually torpedo that.

I'm generally very careful with downvotes on this platform, as I think they should only be used when something is plain wrong or detrimental to the discussion. For me, your comment falls into the second category though; it doesn't add anything to the discussion, but seeks to rile up people to start downvoting or brigading others.

I think the idea of independence is still fairly contentious within Taiwanese politics, though they're currently governed by a pro-independence party so maybe that doesn't really matter. It is true, though, that the current cross-Strait consensus would be upset by Taiwan NOT claiming to govern the Mainland, making the "West Taiwan" jokes not make any kind of sense.

Well, it could be that there is an army of paid trolls targeting this relatively small and specialized forum, but it strikes me as much more likely that this is a contentious issue and not everyone feels the same way about it.

Considering how frequently I find people who just don't like what I have to say accusing me of being bought off by some state, company, or other entity, I find such accusations less than compelling when thrown around on so little evidence.