Maybe you did that, I made an account to participate in a discussion forum. Until I submit an application to ycombinator or back one of their startups or apply to one of their startups I don't see how I have fallen for their marketing. Similarly, just because I sometimes get emails from people calling themselves Nigerian princes doesn't mean that I fell for Nigerian prince scams.

Even though you're on a discussion forum, this discussion forum exists because it's part of the marketing strategy for a VC firm.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this. You're having an (ostensibly) good time here and YC benefits, too.

HN is great marketing because people will convince themselves it's not marketing because they're too smart to fall for marketing.

I don't get your point, falling for marketing implies that I would be better off doing something else. What should I do instead of posting here that would be better for me? The only bad thing that could happen is that I fall for HN ads and applies to join them in some manner (if you view that as bad), until that happens I haven't fallen for anything.

Instead I evaluated the product that is HN as a forum, saw it delivered the features and discussions I wanted and decided to post here. It isn't more complicated than that. Can you give an example of a person joining a forum that you wouldn't say is marketing? Because it seems like you just did the "everything is marketing!" argument here.

Forums are great marketing! Sure there are random individuals who run discussion forums for fun. But when a company or organization hosts a discussion forum, it is 100% a form of marketing that they can benefit from.

HN is a forum and it is also a marketing tool. This isn't debatable. It's also not a bad thing.

You can enjoy the features and discussions here but you're also contributing to YC's marketing efforts. Whether you "fall for" the ads and apply to join YC or whatever is somewhat irrelevant. You (and everyone else here) being active and engaged participants is essential to the success of any discussion forum.

This! 100% this! We're all actively participating in Y Combinator's marketing right now, as we argue about whether marketing has any effect on we, the superior nerds. The irony is thick.

I made an account so that I could destabilize the memecomplex which powers this place, replacing opinions and slogans with facts and logic. Eventually, it is my hope that one morning, the rest of y'all will wake up and have a thought like, "Maybe I shouldn't be exploited by Silicon Valley," and then we can turn off HN forever.

Alternatively, PG is a con artist, isn't he!