I think there are two audiences on this site constantly at war with one another: the neckbeard hackers and the douchebag startup CEO's (not that all hackers are total dorks and not that all CEO's are douches...but you get what I'm saying). These together probably make up about 40%-50% of the Hacker News audience. The other pieces of the whole are probably perfectly normal people who just like a good mix of news and code.

The neckbeards hate stuff like Mixergy or TC because they're not into the whole startup scene. The CEO's hate things like _why because they don't understand why he would spend more than 10 minutes a day doing something that doesn't make money (these guys poop while they're promoting synergy). As a result, when something like this happens and gets a lot of stories/attention, the neckbeards take the chance to submit that super 1337 Haskell tutorial they found 2 weeks ago which is subsequently voted up by the CEO's who just want this hobo, non-TechCrunched trash off the front page.

Then again, I have no data on this. Waffles.

A cursory glance at the front page would tell you that nothing has been "purged".

Nice! The classic Zed Shaw You're a douche™ argument. I wasn't expecting that. Well played.

I only come to HN for the lulz.

You'll be ok. I've never seen anything endanger your ego :)

You kidding? That's the funniest thing I've read all week.

Time to write an "HN community is a ghetto, fuck you all I'm too awesome for you guys" rant.

Yeah I find it hard to understand.

Zed,

Post a will-you-be-my-friend article looking for a co-founder. They will love you again.

-t

That's funny cause you say it's funny but you really think it's not.