I'm afraid you're breaking the site guidelines in more than one way. Your comment crosses into personal attack by implicitly accusing the GP of lying ("you weren't there"). And you're posting ideological battle/flamebait comments not just in this thread but in other threads.

These things are not what HN is for and destroy what it is for, so we end up having to ban accounts that do them.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

> unless you made your incidental identity the central topic of discussion in unrelated conversation

http://bash.org/?top try ctrl-fing for "fag", "homo", "jew", etc. These insults were routinely used on the early internet _without_ anyone volunteering their gender/ethnicity/sexual preferences/whatever.

way to miss the point and your argument is a strawman.

People on IRC didn't care about "Who you were" because the assumption was that you came from privilege. Privilege usually translated to white, urban, heterosexual male. Those groups said some horrible things about other communities because they felt the space was "safe".

Now that this is changing and calling people "orientals" or "gay" is no longer acceptable, there is an attempt to rewrite history - as you are trying to do here.

I thought people on IRC are far more likely to be social outcasts. Yes, there was vulgarity, but to say this was indicative of prejudices misses the point by far.

Privilege is not assumed, it is given. Who is this privelege given by?

If by new era of enlightenment you mean a new era of unquestionable bigotry I suppose you are correct.

You know what doesn't translate in text? Sarcasm.