There were any number of less pejorative comparisons you could have made if that was all you wanted to say. I regularly see grandiose claims of life-changing benefits on everything ranging from mildly pointless and overpriced meditation retreats down to Toastmasters, and yet you chose the one entity whose main claim to publicity were things that got its leader-guru sentenced to 120 years in a max security prison.

> I compared the statement 'do this because it changed my life and the life of many others' to the type of language used in cult documentaries on HBO

why did you make that comparison?

[flagged]

It's fine to participate in the thread and present your version of events, but we need you to observe the guidelines, which ask us to avoid fulmination and using capitalisation for emphasis.

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

Thanks for letting me know that, I didn't know

What happened in 2024 that changed your mind?

This: https://web.archive.org/web/20240418095904/https://www.codes...

I paused my recommendation to wait to see if they did what they said they would do. In my opinion they did not, so I then removed my recommendation.

Wait, so you went on a year plus long, single person crusade against a company because.....they offered remote learning options?

That's the straw that broke the camels back? What a weird thing to decide to destroy a company over.

> Codesmith is not a sex cult. I can't believe I'm writing that sentence.

You wouldn't have needed to write that sentence had you not flippantly compared Codesmith to a sex cult in a public forum -- so flippantly that you couldn't even be bothered to spell the cult's name correctly, as if your words carried no weight.

Words do carry weight, and online discourse matters. And your refusal to acknowledge that in your comments here would be incredible if it weren't predictable given your pattern of behavior as outlined by the article and confirmed by a few simple Google searches.

You're even blatantly lying in this very thread that you aren't in the same industry as Codesmith. It would be remarkable except that we've seen the same behavior time and again from founders who think pattern recognition and basic verbal competence relieves them of the need for integrity.

All I can say is that I was in doubt after reading the article, but after reading your responses here, I have a negative view of both you and your company.

> I compared the statement 'do this because it changed my life and the life of many others' to the type of language used in cult documentaries on HBO. I stand by that opinion.

This is ludicrous ... it's also the type of language used by all sorts of people in all sorts of situations. Mentioning a cult is the least charitable thing that can be said.