I'd much rather "performative erudition" than "performative idiocy" (a.k.a. trolling), because the latter makes visiting idiots feel they're in good company[0].
Funny in its way. I was thinking about this a while back. IMO HN as a community is mostly introverted (subjective/qualitative) and structure-biased, so open-ended discussions on "erudite" topics which may not be direct specialties of commenters will encourage a sort of performing or even bluffing effect, out of community-identity stress.
At that time I think I concluded that the least-pressured conversations, and likely most positive and upbeat, would be those on topics like retro computing. Such a topic is close to the HN tech-user specialty, close to the heart because of its strong integration with personal past experiences, and mostly made up of "known" or "closed-ended" topics. So, far from a performance or bluff, you get some pretty passionate tales from direct experience, and erudition be damned.
Not sure if that's a rule, but so far it matches my personal perceptions of what makes a really good discussion here, vs. one that's...less like that.
I'm not about to go searching, I'm watching WION on youtube at the moment which is a (new, 2015) news outlet in India which often refers to it as Wuhan Virus, but if I posted anything that wasn't CNN or NYT or such I'll prob just get downvoted with comments saying "oh thats fake news" or "thats not a creditable because we don't have it here in America".
To be clear when I say "most of asia" I don't mean, every country, and every news outlet. But that it's not uncommon.
I've seen news in Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, all refer to it as Wuhan Virus.
Singapore (where I live) I don't recall seeing it referred to as Wuhan Virus since maybe mid-march.
In any case if someone refers to it as Chinese/China Virus, I completely agree that it's racist. But Wuhan is the origin, and the original name given. Renaming has probably only hurt china more as people are very angry with the WHO and ccp.
If anything latest AP scoop [1] definitively refutes such theories as it shows internal memo as late as Jan 14 spoke of h2h as something "evidence suggests" is "possible"
Is track changes not good enough?