FWIW, I think that was probably because your comment was unsubstantive enough that it was unclear what you meant, which probably put it in a worst-case situation. Also, unsubstantiveness attracts downvotes in its own right, especially when it contains traces of snark. Also, your account has quite a history of posting unsubstantive comments—could you please not do that? We're trying for something different here.
We can set aside my history and focus on the simple point being made: labeling this issue as "petty drama" speaks volumes. It speaks volumes about you and the values you are espousing for this site and community, and reflects poorly upon YCombinator as an establishment in general.
In early March we were at a point in a global pandemic where vaccines were hard to come by in the US and real lives were at risk and changed by receipt of the vaccine.
That it is simply "petty drama" that someone is calling out the community for ejecting him over being repulsed by behavior that seeks to sidestep a good-faith system intent on helping those most at risk first is disgusting.
How's that. Is that substantive? I figured it was between the lines.
I don't think it's "petty" (to use dang's wording) because the underlying issue ("cheating" to get a vaccine) is petty. You're right - the underlying issue is serious.
It's "petty" because the discussion isn't about the underlying issue, the discussions is about someone claiming that they were kicked out of YC for posting to Twitter about someone else posting about skipping the line to a separate internal forum. That's very far removed from the underlying issue of vaccines, and brings in so many other topics into play, many of which are just not best reasoned about in this kind of forum (e.g. is the tweeter telling the truth? If they are, was it ok that they publicly tweeted about something from an internal forum? Did they first approach the original posted? etc.)
Much as you or I might like the discussion to be "Does YC condone lying/cheating to get the vaccine early", that's just not the topic we can actually answer here, since we have no access to the real underlying facts (and probably only one side speaking).
That is what to my mind makes this issue "petty", not the seriousness of the subject matter.
By the time something goes through this many twitterfilters, whatever non-petty quality it may have had to begin with has long been boiled away. It has become a self-licking ice cream cone of internet drama—something that certainly deserves the word 'petty'. Moreover, there was a long history of pettiness preceding this.
We can't set aside your history because (a) you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and (b) we've asked you repeatedly not to do that in the past. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Yeah, I understand you don't want to set it aside in general which is fine. I was only requesting you set it aside to entertain what I was saying in the above comment.
And sure, happy to review the guidelines, all prior points aside.
Though to be clear, the problems of this community go deep when a moderator is dismissing this kind of serious issue as petty drama.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html