That point was void to begin with. It is an appeal to authority in which the validity of the authority is on extremely shaky grounds.

> fretting over a salute and boycotting the company seems performative.

Performative actions are still actions, and sometimes deliver results. If those results are as little as make some people feel better, those are still results. That said, it is hard to be more performative than the gesture it self. So if you want to criticize HN users for being performative, you should apply the same standard to Elon Musk.