. . . venturing in cautiously. . .
Finnagain, you were definitely whooshed in the original thread. Your misunderstanding of the thread caused your first post to come off as self-aggrandizing, to some extent. So far, no harm done - we’ve all been whooshed at some point or another, with embarassing results.
I thought the responses to you from most of the other posters were, um, “affectionately vicious” - sure they made fun of your post, but it was no worse than lots of other mis-posts get, 'cause we’ve all made the same sort of mistake and gotten reamed ourselves. This is a mean place full of smart people, so any mis-step gets you clobbered. Didn’t seem like anything personal to me.
(And, yeah, I also saw the result of your misunderstanding as ironic. By your misunderstanding, you seemed to model the behaviour that was being pitted.)
Where you went wrong was in returning the viciousness without the “affectionate” part. You were really over the top, out of proportion to the type of “attacks” that were being leveled at you. This being the pit, any time somebody loses it (as you appeared to), lots of folks can’t help wading in for some fun.
Unless you’ve got your tongue firmly embedded in your cheek, and we’ve all *been * whooshed, you should consider stepping back and taking a deep breath, if only for the sake of your blood pressure and stuff.

