After pulling off the greatest launch party ever, Appsterdam has gotten quite a bit of press, leading to the usual litany of naysaying and dick measuring in comments around the Web.

Since a lot of these comments contain wrong information—50% income tax in the Netherlands? That would suck!—and because I believe in addressing your critics where they address you, I took on the onerous task of descending into the unmitigated hell that is Internet comments.

Hacker News has this really annoying feature where at some undefined point any attempt to post another comment simply tells you: “You’re submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.”

This is the smarmiest, most swear-inducing error message I have ever seen. Not only does it sound like a David Spade character, it doesn’t actually give me any information. How fast is too fast? Do I have to wait? For how long? Did my message post? Is my data lost? What do I do now?

They could have saved some characters by just having the message say, “Dear user, fuck you.”

After some sleuthing, I figured out the message didn’t post, and since this is someone I’ve accidentally offended with my American brusqueness, I feel I must make immediate amends.*

The original comment, from ianterrell:

1. > Now that Sofa has been acquired by Facebook, the company’s team (ironically enough) will be moving to Palo Alto. But Lee said he doesn’t expect that to affect on Appsterdam’s future...
   

2. 
   

3. If the founders don’t believe in their own product enough to use it, it’s going to fail.
   

I responded:

1. You are, if you will pardon the expression, talking out of your ass.
   

2. I brought Appsterdam to Sofa. I kept Appsterdam when Sofa left. Even if I died tomorrow, Appsterdam would continue. This isn’t a product. It’s a movement. Its power doesn’t come from its founders, it comes from its people, and our people are amazing.
   

ianterrell responded:

1. Well, regardless of how it’s framed or the metaphor I used, some of your amazing people just went to Palo Alto.
   

2. 
   

3. I wish you all the best, even if you do choose to be impolite.
   

Whoops! Darn me and my colorful expressions. Just yesterday I confused someone by telling them I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. Now this! And so, I present, my humble clarification.

1. Sorry if I came across as impolite. Like I said, pardon the expression. It may have been inappropriately colorful. All I meant was that you’re talking about things you don’t know anything about.
   

2. 
   

3. I had the idea for Appsterdam and got things rolling. Sofa wanted to help out, but then they got offered a lot of money to move to the Valley. That’s great for them, and great for us, because that means we’ll have that many more Appsterdammers with Valley experience and investment money.
   

4. 
   

5. To suggest that their move in anyway represents a lack of faith in Appsterdam is just wrong. They don’t think that. I don’t think that. Nobody thinks that, except for you.
   

6. 
   

7. It’s also meaningless. Sofa did not found Appsterdam. I did. Sofa did not build Appsterdam, our army of volunteers did. Sofa designed our logo and website, but we get to keep those when they leave.
   

8. 
   

9. So even if they hated Appsterdam with the fire of a thousand suns, it wouldn’t doom us to failure. It wouldn’t even slow us down. We didn’t get to work together long enough for their leaving to impact us at all.
   

10. 
    

11. So your premise is wrong, and your conclusion is wrong, because you are working on no knowledge. You made a venomous statement that misrepresents things for no other reason than to be a naysayer.
    

12. 
    

13. Then, when you got caught by the people whose lives you are actually talking about, you tried to pass it off as a metaphor, even though that makes no sense at all, unless we accept the unlikely conclusion that you don’t actually know what a metaphor is or how to construct one.
    

14. 
    

15. That’s all I meant. I didn’t mean to be rude. Sorry if I offended.
    

* Because what else is a blog called “Motherfucker” for?