What you're calling a "gimmick account" may well be a way to shield oneself from the negative karma associated with asking questions that go against the downvote capacity of the unwashed masses. The parent is clearly making a statement that goes against what the recent wave of HN users seem to be upvoting.

I have been a long-time lurker here, but felt compelled to create an account to post in support of the parent. There has been too many submissions lately where there is a low barrier to entry, inane discussion, and no connection to hacking.

That may have been true in the past when there was no restriction on downvotes, but now there is a -8 karma limit per statement. I believe it was done so that someone would not get overly penalized for a statement but they would still get the message that the statement was not within the guidelines of the community.

It's actually been halved to -4 now.

I don't give a shit about using my real account to speak my mind, I have no idea why people on HN are afraid of that.

If I had my way the names seth godin, tim ferriss, derek sivers, or any number of these quack bloggers would never show up in HN. I come here for business and technology, not bullshit self-help articles on agenda-having auto-promotional blogs.

I dislike self-promotional bloggers too. But I believe Derek Sivers is pretty sincere and is actually doing stuff for love rather than money (if you know anything about his history, you should realize this even more). If you don't get anything out of his posts, obviously don't waste your time but I've noticed after reading his posts I always feel just a little bit more inspired to transcend myself. Doing a startup is as much about being able to stay inspired as it is about understanding the nuts and bolts of technology. Staying motivated and optimistic is key and any little bit of help we can get from each other's experiences will not go to waste as long as it's coming from the right place.

How is Derek Sivers' personal blog a "agenda-having promotional blog"? What do you see him promoting on that post? He sold CDBaby for a gazillion million dollars so he doesn't really need to push stuff in your face like Tim Ferriss - you can't put them in the same ball park.

Maybe the problem is I just hate bloggers in general.