alan_cx is not describing a scenario that fits with the explanation of being "flagged to death."
Alan is speaking about the "new" page, where you will routinely see dead articles if you have showdead enabled. In fact, if you reload the new page frequently you can see many articles that become dead the moment (effectively) they are posted. This isn't flagging; it's an automatic mechanism. It may be an automatic mechanism informed by previous heavy flagging of other articles from the same domain or any number of other heuristics, but it happens too quickly for it to be the result of user action on the specific article.
As far as I can tell, flagging affects the sorting algorithm for the home page (use of the user script "HN Slapdown" allows you to visualize each article's score versus its rank order, providing color coding to indicate heavily-flagged articles) but I have not in my admittedly short HN experience ever seen an article become dead as a direct result of flagging.
I have my own misgivings about the rigid title-normalization policy so I appreciate him and the op taking the time to ask some questions.