Sarcasm is unbecoming, but only because it's a thinly disguised insult. Read that comment as "What you just said was so egregiously stupid that I'm going to show that by pretending that you meant something different". Put that way, it would be clearly inappropriate for HN, so they use sarcasm as a fig leaf.

It might be more becoming to say "Many people are dying and I think it's inappropriate to use a generic, vague expression pertaining to this other, much less directly violent thing." Or words to that effect. But I'm not surprised that the GP post was so shocked by the phrasing that they resorted to sarcasm instead.

> Sarcasm is unbecoming, but only because it's a thinly disguised insult. Read that comment as "What you just said was so egregiously stupid that I'm going to show that by pretending that you meant something different".

this is supposed to be against the rules here on HN. it's not as though I didn't understand what was being communicated.

They are hoping that by not actually putting it that way, they can get away with it. I don't know if they can or not. It's up to the moderators to make that decision of whether it crosses a line.

If it were up to me, I'd tell people that they have to keep far away from the line, and not try to sidle up to it without crossing it. But as you can tell from the many other comments, many people disagree that there should be any moderation at all, and certainly would allow something that isn't explicitly a call for violence.

I am enjoying the irony of discussing the moderation of a nonviolent comment in a thread about relaxed moderation of violent content.