Oy. I don't see any reason to abandon your account. Nothing I said was intended to make you feel awful, make you feel you should delete anything and so on. I have made the same mistakes in the past and I am still working on trying to learn to effectively communicate online. The lack of voice tone, facial expression etc ad nauseum makes Internet discussions especially challenging. I get wildly misinterpreted in an ugly way on a regular basis. I absolutely have no plans to abandon any accounts over it.

If you learned something from the exchange and are more careful in the future, that's as good as it gets. Lots of people keep making the same mistakes over and over, never getting any better. As long as you learn from your mistakes -- so you can go make all new mistakes -- you are fine.

Thanks. And again, I'm sorry this whole thing happened.

You don't need to do that, the world is big and our perspective can only incorporate so much of it. It's not really healthy to let one (relatively small) mistake or a couple of people you don't even know getting mad at you cause you to abandon things of a higher priority. (Like your current identity on a website you like.)

As Mz said, if you learned from the mistake flagellating yourself isn't necessary.

Thanks. I was ashamed, but I think you're right not that it's not worth abandoning an identity over. A better strategy will be to avoid participating in non-technical discussions on HN. So that's what I'll do.

Nah. I am probably the best possible person to make this kind of mistake with. I am not grudging, I have excellent family support -- when I am suicidal, my sons make sure I am not left alone -- and I explain certain kinds of things well.

Take a break until it smarts less, but don't swear off nontechnical discussions for all time. :-)

Have a great day!