It’s interesting how con men’s confidence games are now being upvoted and celebrated by the Hacker News community. The celebration of bait and switch tactic in these emails is indicative of how shady startup culture is getting.

There is no sacred ground to maintain trust. Social proof, vanity metrics, out right lying is all fair game in this wild west. This is how credibility crumbles. This is how the startup scene becomes overwhelmingly a market of lemons as honest folks get pushed to the wayside and sociopaths rise amongst the chaos.