Are you sure you understand what my position is? Care to strongman it?

Fwiw I think you're actually right that HN tends to spend way too much time on semantics, and I'm certainly guilty of that myself sometimes

I am not arguing for or against your position. I am using the form you just used in order to mirror how annoying doing something like that is.

Your initial intent was clear. I was simply trying to move this towards something productive. Clearly I failed

You don't seem to be 'simply' doing anything. Everything you have posted besides the first comment about phishing is some kind of dodge which uses obvious manipulation tactics, for instance saying 'I do that myself sometimes', which is a cop method for encouraging confessions, or 'you can have the last word' works to actually let you have the last word. Stop doing that.

You're ascribing a ton of ill will here, and I hope you'll give me a little more grace, but on the other hand maybe there is some truth to your words. I'll see if I can communicate more clearly and authentically in the future. Thanks for the opportunity to introspect.

Assuming good faith, I will elaborate:

* to respond to something you don't agree with, in this case a metaphor, perhaps just write "I don't agree with that metaphor" or "let's stick to realistic examples"

* try not to dissect motives unless necessary. The person you responded to made a good point that people will do things against their interests out of habit or convenience -- why does use of a completely legitimate tactic need to be singled out?

* technical people who work with non-technical people (or even who deal with non-technical families and friends and children) are highly accustomed to describing things in simple metaphors

I realize that I have been uncordial and somewhat aggressive with you in this instance, but it made me particularly irked to see someone profess such an amount of self-awareness while showing a profound lack of it.

Either you are (a) just not in your groove mentally at that moment, (b) not as centered as you like to think you are, or (c) playing some kind of game, either consciously or unconsciously. Either way I figured my approach would get a response and hopefully a correction.

I look forward to our next encounter and genuinely hope it starts off on a better footing because you seem like an interesting person.