> Maybe it’s a real person and I’m being an asshole here, but it’s hard to tell.

The site guidelines are clear on this: you should assume that it's a real person and try your best to reel back these sorts of accusations, which are nearly always wrong, and nearly always driven by differences of background and (therefore) opinion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm rushing out the door just now but here are a couple of past explanations about this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851 (May 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948722 (Oct 2024)

(as well as https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... of course)