I have suspicions that this introduction was downvoted because, on first reading, it feels like an advertising post filled with Applause Lights and other gimmicks (the feeling is particularly strong for me as I just finished reading the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence, though I had already read the majority of the individual posts in jumbled order).

A second reading sufficed to dismiss the feeling for me, and upon randomly selecting five sentences that felt like gimmicks and estimating their intended meaning, it turns out that it wasn't so gimmicky at all. Even the word "emergence", given as a prime example of modern Mysterious Answer in many contexts, seems to have been used properly here.

The oddity of the initial feeling of advertising and gimmickyness and how easily dispersed it was is enough to pique my curiosity, and I think I'll take some time to actually read that book now. Ironically, the only reason I even became aware of this post was seeing the reminder that downvoting was frowned upon in the recent comments. Heh.

Folks, a reminder that downvotes against introduction posts on the "Welcome" thread are frowned upon. There's nothing in the parent comment that should be sufficient to override that norm.

Yes there is---the rest of the comments that also advertise the book while attempting to shame Vladimir out of downvoting him for allegedly sinister emotional reasons. Making that sort of status challenge can be a useful way to establish oneself (or so the prison myth goes) but also often backfires and also waives the 'be gentle with the new guy' privileges.

People should consider themselves free to ignore thomblake's frowns and vote however they please in this instance. There is no remaining obligation to grant marcusmorgan immunity to downvotes.