You realize that it's dismissive and condescending to ignore the problem I'm describing and respond with an assumption that I'm unaware of the tone of my post, right? Pot, meet kettle.
Because you're propagating the idea that you (or anyone asking questions) knows better what a person asking needs than the person asking does. Telling people you know what they need better than they do is pretty close to the definition of condescending.
People are emotional because nearly everyone who asks a question on the internet has to deal with people telling them "You don't actually want an answer to your question, you want an answer to this other question." By boosting the signal of the horrible XY problem idea, you're contributing to that problem.
I'm not saying this kind of miscommunication never happens, but the opposite is actually far more common.
Unfortunately I had no idea about the perverse incentives for question answering and the terrible moderator practices on SO, so I walked into a minefield giving an answer here that I thought was helpful based on my experience as a hands on technician working directly with people -- but it turned out to be a lightning rod for people's frustrations on these issues.
Here, I'll coin a name for a problem I see much more often, which is called the XX problem:
1. User has problem X, and asks for a solution for it.
2. People viewing the question decide that the original user actually has problem Y.
3. Those people tell the original user that they actually want to solve problem Y, flame the original user, and if they have the power to do so, edit the original user's question to be asking about problem Y.
4. Those people use poorly-thought-out pop-social-psychology to justify their shitty behavior.
5. The original user still doesn't have a solution to problem X, because they really needed a solution to problem X all along.