Well, sure, if you like. And I grant I should've left out that excess of cleverness in the Newspeak style; it confuses the point, and while Orwell has written many things worth referencing, Nineteen Eighty-four is almost never among them. Unfortunately, I found the meter too appealing to discard, and the description is accurate enough, however distasteful you find the formulation I chose.

Criticism is well and good. For example, one might usefully point out that his dialectical materialism is obviously rusty, and that he therefore mistakenly considers his obviously petit-bourgeoisie self to be a member of the working class -- a truly risible proposition.

There is, though, a material difference between mere criticism, and someone being caned in the public press for having spoken of the indigent in an insufficiently respectful fashion, to the extent that he feels the need to utter a belly-crawling public apology -- which, as always, only further inflames the piranha [1] infesting [2] what passes [3] for modern Internet discourse -- and that he's also disavowed [4] by the company which he, for the moment, leads.

Said disavowal is necessary, of course, for the same reason it was foolish of Gopman to utter his plaint in such a publicly attributable fashion, rather than, for example, over beers with a few trusted friends in a quiet, out-of-the-way bar, or better yet at home. But of course it would be entirely [5] unreasonable [6] to suggest that anyone intends to intimidate anyone. And the only hyperbole [7] in evidence [8] is entirely mine! How plainly ridiculous that I or anyone should describe Gopman's opinions as "unacceptable" and "impermissible", simply because there is a large bloc which does not accept them, will not permit them, and has the power to enforce these preferences without effective opposition.

(And there is nothing even slightly laughable in Valleywag, sort of a less intellectually hefty and more pretentious TMZ, calling [9] anything "about as weighty as telling the world's longest knock knock joke". Perhaps it takes one to know one.)

Getting back to the point, I'd actually have to say Gopman is getting off fairly lightly, so far at least. Were he a mere employee instead of a CEO, he might already be out of a job. Who was that fellow who rejected the "him" -> "them" commit on the Node.js Github? Noordhuis, that was his name -- an HN cause celebre, for two or three hours at least. He crossed the same sort of people, and look what happened to him! [10]

So, yes, I maintain there is a difference between anything which can fairly be termed "criticism", and the sort of low-calorie, uniquely West Coast-flavored struggle session we see here. Criticism, after all, has as its ultimate purpose the improvement of its recipient, while what we see here, as always when the Internet social justice piranha smell blood, is much more like -- if you'll forgive me going back to the well one more time -- a crowdsourced Two Minutes Hate, with Gopman, or whoever else has most recently had the temerity to express an unacceptable, impermissible opinion and the carelessness to be publicly caught so doing, in the starring role.

Perhaps you imagine this to be evidence of a healthy society. If so, I wish I shared your optimism.

[1] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/12/11/3050501/angelhac...

[2] https://twitter.com/Gopmania/status/410814090148212736

[3] http://sfist.com/2013/12/11/angelhack_startup_ceo_trashes_sf...

[4] https://twitter.com/sabeen_sabeen/status/411013749433053184 (note the retweets)

[5] http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Sta...

[6] http://sfist.com/2013/12/11/angelhack_startup_ceo_trashes_sf...

[7] http://sfist.com/2013/12/11/angelhack_startup_ceo_trashes_sf...

[8] https://www.google.com/search?q=techbro

[9] http://valleywag.gawker.com/happy-holidays-startup-ceo-compl...

[10] http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/12/03/bnoordhuis-departure/