It always seems like "tiny dabs" when we're the one producing it, but I guarantee you that it doesn't feel that way to everyone else. Perhaps the majority don't care, but at least in the long tail, a bunch will, and some of those will get activated enough to lash back. The reason we ask people not to post like that isn't because we think it's somehow wrong in itself. It's simply because the quality of the lash-backs is so low, and they lead to even worse. That's why we got https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22021528 and so on.

In that way, each user here is partly responsible for the quality of the replies they get. If we want to have a good community in the long run, we have to learn to edit out gratuitous provocation.