It and the Ron thing make the elitism increasingly distasteful
Is it really elitist to not make friends with people you don't like (Ron) or people you might not have time for (Hagrid)? I never befriended any of the janitors at any of my schools (have you?), even if they might have really enjoyed my friendship, and I don't consider myself elitist for that.
for him to make the choices he's made means he's in full Dark Lord mode. Harry's lost, and it's a question of whether or not he'll be redeemed, not whether or not he'll resist
I think the term "Dark Lord" is suffering from Sword of Good symptom. If "losing" means deciding to make the world a better place, eliminating Azkaban and/or death, and preventing future atrocities then I'm all for this sort of loss. Call it "becoming a Dark Lord" if you want, it's much better than any alternative.
Is it really elitist to not make friends with people you don't like (Ron) or people you might not have time for (Hagrid)?
It depends on why you don't like them or don't have time for them. It's more a comparison to the original than it is a lack of justification in-world (the class balance of the protagonists and antagonists has shifted significantly). If Ron is just a snot that wants to exclude Malfoy from everything, then sure, don't be friends with him. But is that really all Eliezer saw in him?
(have you?)
I make it a priority to befriend support ...
Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
After 61 chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and 5 discussion threads with over 500 comments each, HPMOR discussion has graduated from the main page and moved into the Less Wrong discussion section (which seems like a more appropriate location). You can post all of your insights, speculation, and, well, discussion about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic here.
Previous threads are available under the harry_potter tag on the main page (or: one, two, three, four, five); this and future threads will be found under the discussion section tag (since there is a separate tag system for the discussion section). See also the author page for (almost) all things HPMOR, and AdeleneDawner's Author's Notes archive for one thing that the author page is missing.
As a reminder, it's useful to indicate at the start of your comment which chapter you are commenting on. Time passes but your comment stays the same.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: