> But why pride yourself on taking the easy way out?

Meaningless question. I can prove that to you by turning it around: why choose a harder path? What is to gain? You only lose mental health. Having to grind my teeth and not telling someone they're being an arse is bad for me.

> It isn't being honest and direct and straight to the point, it's a power move being deliberately rude/offensive/cruel hiding behind "just being honest and direct".

No. That's your interpretation because you are offended. I am in "the Linus camp" and knew many others like me and him and I am telling you that this absolutely is about cutting to the chase and solving the problem at hand on the spot.

I have no motive to lie to you or anybody, nor any face to save.

If you don't believe me and keep arguing that it's "a power move" then you're arguing with fictional people and not the real ones standing in front of you. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> For everyone who doesn't have that power, and needs to work with others, it's not an option.

Obviously yes, what's your point here? I don't get angry at work (where I don't have the power to tell people off) which is a double win. I got stuff to do, sometimes others get in the way, sometimes I make bad calls. Oh well, I made my peace with the fact that things can't happen as quickly as I want them to. And it's not even about "thick skin", it's more "giving up on perfectionism".

> If that's your project selection criteria - "don't be thin skinned, man up, grow a pair!" - it's not-meritocratic; like a selection based on wealth or social class or accent or nationality isn't.

The hell are you even talking about, and even bringing class / accent / nationality to the picture? It seems you just wanted to get stuff off of your chest and I was a convenient target. You're not even talking to me, again, you are talking to some fictional guy who does not exist.

> That story shape is a perfect fit for "everybody clapped" meme, you feel superior to the stupid women who didn't even think of this power move, and wait for your applause.

Your snark does not change the undeniable fact that I gave them advice that would have helped them with their mental health. Whether they accept it or not is on them. Those who didn't accept it also taught me a good lesson: to mind my own business and only give advice if I am asked to. It was a valuable life lesson that I am utilizing often (though definitely not always).

And yes, some people were mind blown... though they did not clap. :D You got one thing right at least.

> Cutting off the network and getting a reputation as difficult to be friends/work with risks a lot more for women than it does for you.

Context matters a lot here. I was talking about completely optional interactions where zero work / money / influence was involved. They were "buddies" for 10+ years and their main goal was to basically outdo each other. Extremely toxic and I pointed that out to them. Some of them listened and said it felt very liberating to just stop. The rest I was not interested in communicating further with because they had a tendency to bring the same drama to our extremely casual communications, which naturally led to them fading away with time.

> That "I'm colder, more vicious, than you so I win. Empathy and emotions are weakness." is so ... last season.

For the third time: you are not even talking about me. I am not cold at all, I simply learned to pick my battles. Seriously no idea what made you explode with so many assumptions, it must be somebody in your past and I probably reminded you of them. You should probably go talk to them though, not me.

> Again, fine for your personal project, but having a shouty vicious bouncer is turning away the porentially useful contributions of unknown people who don't want to fight their way into that kind of workplace.

Nowhere did I even implied I want a "bouncer" or that he/she must be "shouty". Stop projecting (4th time now).

Also that phrase of yours reeks of FOMO. I am sick and tired of being a victim of FOMO. Somebody doesn't like that I called them out for being entitled and spamming my OSS project's issue tracker and as a result they go away and won't contribute anything ever? Cool! Win for everyone.

You conflate a very classic case of "fear of missing out" with "showing rude a-holes the door".

> Consider @dang here at HN doesn't take the easy way out of shouting people down

I have considered him and other moderators a long time ago and found that I don't have what it takes to be a moderator, I don't want to have it and I am very fine with that. I am impressed by people who manage to keep the peace without alienating anyone except the biggest detractors but this is a non-goal for me, especially in the open-source contributing scene. I don't moderate forums and don't want to, and I'd be terrible at it. Again, I pick my battles.

> Trying to build a community of disparate people is much harder than being a dictator who can tell disagreeable people to piss off.

Another non-goal for me. When I start doing more open-source I'll be looking for people who contribute astute observations ("You made mistake X in file Y") or code. If somebody politely asks "is this feature on the roadmap?" I'll also politely say "yes but it's a low priority for me, what's your use-case?" and we can continue the interaction from there.

But, somebody doing a drive-by saying "I tried your project and it couldn't do X, your project sucks lol" then I have zero qualms blocking them and removing whatever they posted.

Did they have the worst day this year? I don't care. I had days after which I wondered if I even want to continue living, and nobody around me was none the wiser. They only saw a very tired guy who wasn't chatty, nothing else.

I can protect people from my bad moods and bad days. I expect all people I interact with to do the same. And I am very fine with cutting off those that can't do it.

---

No idea why you fixated on me as some sort of an enemy but you have aimed wrongly. Severely so.

What I was saying is that I don't feel the need to smile politely at a-holes and use a soft language. And I don't. The rest is a plethora of projections from your side.

That's one side of the coin. The other side is: if you are Linus, you have heard the same dumb questions or obviously wrong assertions, thousands of times. It's absolutely normal to start telling people to go RTFM and stop talking without thinking things through and without doing the proper due diligence. Ask anyone working in retail.