I can, but made a choice to be opinionated here. The CEO of Twitter leverages clownishness for effect, titling himself (at present) as 'Mr Tweet' and uninhibitedly trolling others, often in crude or aggressive terms. While I could take a Ghandian approach of not reciprocating such negative behavior and instead maintain a diplomatic/academic air of prim neutrality, I think Musk's behavior is strategic in that he asserts social permission to 'act out' as the natural consequence of his wealth and power, whereas his critics are obliged to water down their opinions or suffer reputational attack.

While I certainly don't want to import the combative and shallow standards of Twitter 'debate' to HN, I do think we have a right tp be opinionated, and that my the term 'manchild' labels a specific sort of behavior rather than some petty or crude dig at his appearance or personal life.

I think the person you’re responding to was trying to help you be more persuasive. You can ignore his advice, but it may mean that a lot of people just ignore you or think you’ve got nothing to say.

Yeah, I think use of that term is warranted by the facts. No need to sugar-coat it.

Indeed, I'd wish that the HN community was more hostile to Musk's bulldozer approach, seeing what it did to both the company, and the engineers. The whole affair has been needlessly destructive -- obnoxiously so -- and his getting away with it harms the profession.

IMHO, the name isn’t necessary. Getting names called and deeds attributed is part of the plan, so take steps to not follow the plan if you aren’t trying to be supportive.

> leverages clownishness for effect, titling himself (at present) as 'Mr Tweet'.

OK. I thought that was funny personally.

> While I could take a Ghandian approach of not reciprocating such negative behavior

I didn't think it was comparable to the British treatment of India under the raj, but OK.