I didn’t shame anyone. The pal thing was a half joke. I’ve also watched this pattern before, it is not a neurodivergent thing, it’s an internet thing. When you start a comment with “No”, suddenly the comment has a tone problem. While the exact same comment would not garner any downvotes if only it started with anything else but the word no. Simply because, here’s a magic component of language, it is very hard for text to convey tone unambiguously. People can be offended and read all sorts of wrong tone. Regardless of the writer’s intention.

That said, my original comment was not meant to be shameful. It was interpreted that way, and it is ok if those who happened to read it at the time chose to interpret it that way. I don’t care about downvotes really and it doesn’t faze me emotionally in any way. But it is an interaction that would not have caused any sort of inconvenience face to face. “Mac is Unix”, “What? No, it isn’t because…” “Oh, ok” But I do agree that on the internet you have to do a peace dance before correcting people. Otherwise you are the one who will be ostracized for bad tone. You want bad tone? go read Linus Torvalds chat logs, then you’ll read a veritable asshole over text on full swing.