> incels who hate women.

I highly doubt that hate towards women (and even hate towards anything) was a facto in the Tay “attack”. It looked much more like they saw a big open door from MS and just exploited it with the most over the top things for lulz and giggles.

If someone says racist/misogynist things for "lulz and giggles" I will assume that person is a racist/misogynist.

The "it was just a joke" excuse is getting real old and tired.

A bully will use anything that seems likely to hurt and provoke, he doesn’t really care what.

There's a thin line between schoolboy/dark humor and bullying.

I'd argue that playing with a bot belongs to the first category, but that's a subjective take.

Would that logic apply to people who joke about topics like death?

A lot of comedians would be demonized under such logic.

Unfortunate that on HN one gets labeled in such a derogatory manner for advancing an argument.

Read the Guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, I am not understanding what you mean here. For my understanding, how do you think the guidelines should be applied here?

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Note that members of the imageboard community predicted "incel" becoming the new "literally Hitler".

Trolls exist, but so do racists and misogynists. We don't know which of them it was, but it's not a stretch to guess the people who found racist and misogynistic insults funny were in fact racist and misogynist.