What part of "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." didn't you understand?

This part apparently: "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

But forgive me, I am, unlike you, not the type of person who finds a story about a Hotel manager behaving badly particularly intellectually gratifying.

>But forgive me, I am, unlike you, not the type of person who finds a story about a Hotel manager behaving badly particularly intellectually gratifying.

Yeah, because it's just about a guy behaving badly, might as well been about a bar brawl. It's not a story that doesn't have connections to how some businesses perceive the internet, internet "mob" justice, antiquated laws, free speech and such, right?

You seem to struggle with the fact that your personal interests and the HN submission guidelines diverge. Even though the story of a Hotel manager levying unlawful charges against his guests seems to pique your intellectual curiosity immensely, it still doesn't mean that it adheres to the submission guidelines. More specifically this part of it: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic"

Also, your use of a double negative in the sentence "It's not a story that doesn't have connections to how some businesses perceive the internet, internet 'mob' justice, antiquated laws, free speech and such, right?" makes it far less sarcastic than you probably intended it to be.