Trace posts about his LoTT hoax to the /r/TheMotte. The users don't react the way he thought they would.

[trigger warning: we're Motte meta-posting. I have to write at least 2000 characters. them's the rules. ]

There's in a sense in which your B&R affiliation does complicate things—because it empirically did in the CW Thread—, but whether it is reasonable for it to do so isn't obvious, and the replies there are much more unhinged than I'd expect. It seems more like they disliked the hoax for <reasons> and then latched onto that as justification. The place seems to have gotten markedly spergier in the past couple months, somehow, and the characteristic rigidity of thought and obsession with 'Truth' is leading to asinine accusations of pooping up the epistemic commons—of course, your whole point is that the commons are already shit-filled, but let's burn the earnest witch that dares admit to it. Maybe we need another war to get the more Continental posters back; the autism ratio is getting too darn high.

Sure, Hlynka is perfectly consistent with his past positions. But iprayiam, who I rather like, returned after months of absence to accuse you of trying to take down LoTT? No offence, but you've nowhere near the temperament to pull that off. You once penned a short novella trying to morally justify a schismatic forum fork—just as much to assuage your own neuroses as to seek community forgiveness, it seemed. In the LoTT hoax Groomercord chats, y'all nearly break frame when challenged by the most basic questions a social engineer would get. And thereby a hyperscrupulous furry is perceived the (accidental?) enforcement arm of the Cathedral. Jfc.

I'd argue you did nothing wrong, even by prevailing Motte/rat diaspora morality. In practice, guess we learned something about the Mottizens. The hoax transcended itself: a community with a founding mythos of cutting through mainstream misperception is now aghast at seeing the mainstream laid bare. Yes, what you did was an abuse of the inherent trust people extend to others. Yes, that trust is strained thin in an atomized society—which is a difficult-to-resolve aspect of liberalism I think you underestimate, e.g. in the Trace v Weed gay marriage series, but I digress. Further, exposing that motivated credulousness probably does marginally degrade trust further yet, though only marginally. However, you produced a mere 0.1% of this year's viral Libs-Doing-Stupid-Shit clickbait. The most compelling case against you isn't consequentialist; rather, it's an argument from virtue and vice. Insofar as any bait is counter to virtue—which all Drama is, at least to classical virtue, and perhaps not at all by modernity's standards—I see no consistent way of holding you out as exceptionally bad. Sorry to see your friends drag you to the pillory.