What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

> I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless.

Point of order here: he never used the word "useless". He also didn't dismiss the post for being negative (he said "I’m not against negative top comments per se but they should at least be factual").

> 1) Thai law was brought up a number of times and you do appear to be violating it. This is probably something that needs to be said.

You're definitely right at least in part: the law should be mentioned. People shouldn't be heading to Thailand without understanding the immigration laws beforehand.

But I don't think accusations that the author is violating the law need to be said. Unless the commenter is a lawyer who specializes in Thai immigration, he or she is simply not qualified to make that assessment. For all we know as readers, he could've unintentionally omitted or oversimplified parts of his above-the-board visa process.

> 2) You mention how cheap it is while he believes its more expensive, but you may have gotten a good deal or stayed in areas that others wouldn't want to.

The author explicitly mentions avoiding Bangkok in his article. The comment in question focused primarily on his experiences in Bangkok. The top commenter was calling him out on something the author agrees with and could've been avoided had the commenter read a bit more carefully.

> 3) He shares a number of anecdotes (sex workers, etc) that differ from your anecdotes. Thailand is a big place, you can both be right, and the more information the better.

Mere disagreement while providing anecdotes is fine and should be expected in a discussion forum. But that's not all the top commenter did. He couched his differing anecdotal experiences with snarky one-liners that imply the author had no idea what he was talking about:

> Before your pop your Macbook Air in a backpack, read my points.

> Yes, you can live in a concrete block with plastic furniture and eat noodles on the street every day.

> Once you're sick of your local noodle vendor you'll find food prices quite high as well.

> If you can stomach the local swill (think Budweiser without the quality control) knock yourself out.

> When you're sick of taking taxis and the BTS/MRT, have fun buying a car at 50% - 300% above US prices.

> If you really want to fake it here it means constantly traveling in and out of the country.

> To not do it properly means breaking the law in a country where you most likely don't speak the language. Have fun with that.

> If it's not someone you've known for a decade then, well, good luck with that.

Those sentences are snark: sarcastic and snide assertions that do little more than to point out how much the author doesn't know when compared to the commenter. They're not needed, or they could've been phrased much more neutrally, if the goal is merely to compare and contrast two expatriate experiences in Thailand. There were a number of commenters who did do that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541708

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6542114

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540640

I agree with the author's sentiment that it's a shame none of them rose higher than the top comment.

Cool, can't wait to see the results.

Snark is one of the defenses we expats develop to deal with culture shock and/or adverse situations in our host country. I predict that the OP is an idealistic new comer while the top commenter is a grizzled old timer who is and will continue to be in Thailand for the long run (idealists barely last the year, at best two). I observe this happen in my host city (Beijing) often, I can tell who will last and who will just get the experience and leave soon.

Front page for a day is not that hard, if you have something relevant and interesting. I think it is better to avoid direct description of your project, and choose unique scenario or good story. Also good idea is to run stress test on your site before.

I made it last year. I needed some feedback and early adopters, it was great to kick start small community. Also my project changed name and that post made it #1 result on Google in 3 weeks. There was handful of serious job offers as direct result of that post, last one 3 months latter.

It has been year since my last post on HN. My project is stable-enough, I have some pilot customers, and even made first profit this month. On other side I have only 50 twitter followers and no invitations to conferences. So I will probably hit HN again in a few weeks :-)

OMG who cares. I'm sorry, but this is just technology startup navel gazing nonsense.