The principle here is that if a commenter addresses the forum as "you people", and especially if he does it in his first comment on the site, things are likely to go downhill fast. Some variant forms:
- All you people/folks/guys—
- Your type --
- You and your ilk --
- What you people don't understand is that your position is completely flawed.
- Looks like you people are overly invested in {topic}.
- You people will stop at nothing to attack {my issue}.
- This is just the sort of thing I've come to expect from you people.
- Your type likes to throw around these pejorative labels for anybody who doesn't agree with you
- I see the whiners are out in force
- So much for {members of a political tendency the speaker opposes} being open-minded.
- This place is just an echo chamber.
- I find it interesting that many of the people on this thread {accusation of hypocrisy}.
The principle also holds true if a commenter addresses some identifiable segment of his fellow commenters that way -- for instance, in a conversation where there's some gender polarization going on, starting a comment "What the hell is wrong with you women?!" (See also: Sample Conversations)