No, this act of defiance was counterproductive, since it paints reasonable people with the same lunatic brush and is based on an illogical and ignorant argument.
But I don't so much care about ineffective vanity protests as I do about the fact that a DailyKos article about one was on the front page of HN. Which is why I flagged the story, and think you should too.
Stories like this are a trap. Most of us, being reasonable, logical people, have a litany of valid arguments against the TSA. A story like this confirms those beliefs and is conflated with them, so that pointing out that the story (a) sucks and (b) isn't germane to HN is taken as an argument against the beliefs, and not just the story.
I wasn't aware I was supposed to flag every DailyKos story (I honestly have no idea wtf that site is). So, i'm sorry for not doing that.
I resent your smug sense of superiority. I am a reasonable, logical person but I don't have a carefully structured and researched legal paper to present as to why the TSA's policies should be reformed. I just know they're assholes and they fuck with me for no good reason. Clearly this woman realized that too and she decided not to stand for it. The fact that she didn't do it well enough does not discount the action in itself, nor does it prove or disprove any other argument against the TSA.
Furthermore, by flagging this story with the reasons you listed you're basically saying the HN readership is so stupid that by reading this article it will debunk any other arguments they have heard or will hear. That basically you're protecting the brainless HN readers from the ideas presented therein, or are protecting people from reading this and forming a negative view of "valid" TSA arguments from "reasonable, logical people."
There is a deeper lesson to take away than just whether her argument was legally valid. For example, take the reasons that you feel are right and take a stand the way she did.
You should read the site guidelines before deciding that I'm commenting out of a sense of smug superiority and not out of general concern for the quality of the site.
I think you should also analyze the fact that this story got you so emotionally invested that the site guidelines didn't occur to you, and that you managed to feel threatened simply because someone questioned the story --- which, again, is pretty obvious vapid. What you're saying in this comment is, "The TSA is bad, so why bother thinking?"
That stories like this tend to have that effect on message board communities is the reason they're proscribed in the site guidelines. There are other communities where a story like this would find a more receptive audience, like Reddit Politics.
But I don't so much care about ineffective vanity protests as I do about the fact that a DailyKos article about one was on the front page of HN. Which is why I flagged the story, and think you should too.
Stories like this are a trap. Most of us, being reasonable, logical people, have a litany of valid arguments against the TSA. A story like this confirms those beliefs and is conflated with them, so that pointing out that the story (a) sucks and (b) isn't germane to HN is taken as an argument against the beliefs, and not just the story.