That blog post I never wrote

That's not a working stiff with a day job talking. That's what caused me to go "Um, I'm very wrong about who this guy is."

That's someone with time on his hands who is materially secure, tech savvy beyond "I make decent coin on an hourly basis as a programmer" and has the mentality of a guy used to being in charge and taking responsibility, not someone punching a clock for a paycheck.

That's the comment that had me starting a blog post I never finished and never published about social dynamics in online forums and wildly misconstruing people whose life circumstances you don't understand and don't realize you don't understand.

And then I decided that was a stupid idea because he or other people on HN would likely read it and the potential damage to my relationship to Hacker News was substantial and there was nothing on the other side of that equation to make that risk of loss or high likelihood of loss remotely worthwhile.

So in 2010, as a dog sick divorcing former homemaker, I had more sense than a lot of women in tech posting on misandrist forums and imagining they are clever. 

That's something I incoherently ranted about before on this blog and now a lot of the ungrateful bitches who pissed all over me on Reddit and down voted me have deleted their comments -- as if that will magically erase it from the memories of male coworkers who saw it at the time. Because these chicks are about as savvy as I was when I was five years old and OUTRAGED at being correctly accused of biting the butter again because I looked around before I did it and was CERTAIN no one saw me.

Anyway, I don't think there actually was any good answers for a woman trying to cope with Hacker News:
Probably, as a guess about something impossible to A-B test, ANY woman spending enough time on HN for ANY reason to have ANY hope of making the leaderboard was going to rub everyone wrong for existing.

Having CF and being a former full-time homemaker and general all around LOSER probably made the inevitable social gaffs and chronic state of falling on my face more palatable and forgiveable.

So I'm merely in social cyberia and not, say, jail or the morgue. (No, I'm not kidding.)
And I have a history of turning down "women in tech" type forums that sent me invitations and just generally not liking spaces like r/womenintech and not typically participating.

Whatever mistakes I made as a completely clueless ninny falling on my face while deathly ill, there are vastly WORSE things I could have done which other women seem to routinely do.

While they act MYSTIFIED that they can't get promoted while publicly dragging their male tech-savvy coworkers like they imagine those guys are too stupid to know what Reddit is. And high fiving other incompetent misandrists publicly about how men are all sexist pigs and THAT is CLEARLY the ENTIRE reason they can't get promoted.

Did he think of me as nothing but a potential date and therefore "not respect me and not take me seriously"? 

Probably.

And I wasn't really trying to position myself like people on Hacker News should take me seriously. I was shocked to realize that I was being respected there as seemingly a prominent female member.

Shocked and rather annoyed, in fact. I treated Hacker News as a place to let my hair down and enjoy myself as a BIG FAT NOBODY no one would pay ANY attention to in a sea of people with PhDs and yadda.

Because I was sick to death of being one of the top three students of my graduating high school class and feeling compelled to develop a dripping sarcasm voice lest someone do something dangerous because I cracked a joke and they took me seriously and sick to death of being the chick asked to join the board of directors mere weeks after volunteering as a moderator for The TAG Project and then being burned for doing my job excellently well and sick to death of being the chick who completely accidentally founded a sub forum on Cyburbia, the world's oldest planning forum, though I wasn't even a professional planner because I asked the forum owner for feedback on my school paper and his feedback was "Uh, I don't know if/when I can set that up with you as moderator." where I also got burned for being good to those awful people.

This shit was doing nothing FOR ME and getting me burned every step of the way. I intentionally positioned myself as a nobody on Hacker News.

So I could talk with people with PhDs and not spend all my time worrying myself sick about typos or misunderstandings. Because I'm some chick in insurance with no meaningful accomplishments to my name and this is my social circle and space to chill after work.

None of which justifies the entire forum stepping over my body in the gutter and ACTIVELY denying me earned income as a freelance writer while gaslighting me, claiming no one makes money online and simultaneously throwing money at a con artist -- Patrick McKenzie -- for being an HN karma whore with no meaningful accomplishments to HIS name EITHER.



Footnote 
Like Mae West said about being married already: "I FORGOT."

It's been a lot of years. I was deathly ill and didn't have it to give. I needed someone to do something for ME for a change and I briefly got that.

And then it DIED. May you all burn in HELL.