When opening up a website to read a story or watch a video, or hell, even an up-and-coming blog, you'll often see a comment section at the bottom of the page. It can be tied to people's Facebook pages or simply just a stand-alone comment section.
If all you do is read the comments section of pages, you are likely among those people who think the world is going to hell or already there. With the exception of a handful of people, most commentators on websites are complete morons.
In most web stories that allow commenting, the items posted usually end up devolving into very polarizing, ignorant, and absolute statements. I'm convinced that any story or video posted on the web that allows commenting can eventually become an argument about race, gender, religion, politics or sexuality.
A story about bubble gum? A couple comments down, you could get into an argument about abortion.
A lost dog? "Your" a racist.
The music industry failing? "F- you, you liberal piece of shit".
These particular examples might be made up - at least I believe I made them up. But if you look closely at the comments posted on the stories you read, your IQ will go down about 10-15%. And many of them may be on innocent stories like the topics I mentioned above - which have nothing to do with the t
Very little is gained from a comments section. I can understand why my friend Nick closed it off on his site (www.berserkhippo.com), even though I don't know how much spam/stupid comments he would get if he had it open.
The comments section on my blog is usually empty. When it's not, it's usually filled with coherent information that doesn't look like it was crafted at a junior high Klan meeting. I appreciate my audience and feel that they can comment on stories as they wish - and I look to respond to those folks as soon as possible. I would not hesitate to shut that function off if I felt like morons were taking over my blog with their ignorance. So to reiterate, this commenting beef is not with my folks - my comment people are great.
It's all the other sites, the sites that lend themselves to massive amounts of views and clicks. I believe many of these sites would benefit to go the way of my friend Nick and get rid of their commenting sections. Very little is gained from their presence on stories posted on Yahoo or some newspaper chain.
I hope that the people who randomly comment on stories here keep commenting, because they're usually well-versed folks. If I have to start moderating moronic comments, that may be the day I heed the advice I'm giving to the news conglomerates and shut down the ability to comment.
Added after blog post: looks like I already wrote a similar blog in July 2011. I guess this can happen from time to time when one is nearing 300 total blogs. The same moronic things are cyclical apparently.
Showing posts with label comments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comments. Show all posts
7/31/2011
No Comments: Why Some People Shouldn't Talk
Note: The piece of information that I use at the beginning of this piece do not represent my views on race, etc. This is merely to point out the absurdity of people in Internet forums.
Here are some comments left after a story I just read:
"Watermelon withdrawal!"
"how do you stop 5 black guys from raping a while woman? throw them a basketball! ha ha ! that's just a joke so don't freak out people ok ?"
"I would suggest that 95% of black America has a mental disease. It seems to me that they are
nothing but a bunch of antagonistic, habitual liars. Go back to Africa, please"
Is this story about race relations in America? Not quite. These are comments left after an NFL story concerning wide receiver Brandon Marshall being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which this Yahoo story said is a disorder that 1 in 50 adults suffer from. And mind you, I didn't even bother looking past the first four comments of the story (these were three of the four). I'm sure there were other comments of race that appeared below this.
Unfortunately, this garbage is what appears on the majority of stories' comment boards. And very infrequently, the stories have something to do with a race issue. Often times, it's people hiding behind computer screens spewing their racist views into any and every story that they can. A story about Brandon Marshall discussing his personality disorder has nothing at all to do with race. Whether the diagnosis is part of the 21st century mantra of diagnosing anything and everything can be up for debate- especially the "sex addictions" that Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner supposedly suffered from and needed treatment on. I digress.
The worst comments that I've seen normally come from political stories. Whether a person is extremely left, extremely right or anything in between, I see many articles about politics that go so far off the topic of what the story was about that in the end, it just ends up with a bunch of the same non-sensical name-calling and finger-pointing that never produces quality public discourse. Maybe there are some sites out there where people actually discuss these matters in intelligent forums and actually present facts and ideas into stories rather than calling someone a nutjob for having different ideals than them. I don't read enough political sites to know if there are such sites- mainly because the news I do come across is much like the Brandon Marshall story above, except with political semantics attached to it.
Don't get me wrong - I have my opinions about people and do think some people are nutjobs. But is telling someone this inside a comments section actually going to contribute anything to anything? If you're going to say something, make sure it's not some pointless drabble and "Internet anger" (anger that people feel more comfortable expressing faceless but would never do as such to a person's face). I just made up that term, although perhaps some other genius coined it before me. I digress again.
If you guys write in comments sections of stories, I really hope you're avoiding this crap of name-calling and other nonsense that makes me wish that some sites would disallow comments (in my eyes, not the same as limiting freedom of speech). Not every story on the Internet needs comments following it. For example, if someone signs a free agent contract with a team, all I need to know is what team and how much. If I have opinions about the story, I don't need to share my thoughts to strangers halfway across the world. People should have friends to discuss these things with. Or go to a bar or something and discuss it there - although there are a lot of morons in the general public, so maybe finding a friend or two to discuss something with is a better option.
Note2: You may say that a blog would be a contradiction to this idea of not needing to share my ideas with strangers. But with my limited readership and the fact that I promote this exclusively to friends, I don't feel it to be a contradiction. You may disagree. Anyways, I digress, part 3.
I don't advocate censoring speech - just wish that some people would never talk. So please, if you know anyone who should stop talking, have them read this blog so they can anonymously attack me and call me a piece of liberal white trash. Definitely not politically attached to any party and the trash part I'd have to say is incorrect. At least they'd get the white part right.
Ok, no more digressing. The end.
Here are some comments left after a story I just read:
"Watermelon withdrawal!"
"how do you stop 5 black guys from raping a while woman? throw them a basketball! ha ha ! that's just a joke so don't freak out people ok ?"
"I would suggest that 95% of black America has a mental disease. It seems to me that they are
nothing but a bunch of antagonistic, habitual liars. Go back to Africa, please"
Is this story about race relations in America? Not quite. These are comments left after an NFL story concerning wide receiver Brandon Marshall being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which this Yahoo story said is a disorder that 1 in 50 adults suffer from. And mind you, I didn't even bother looking past the first four comments of the story (these were three of the four). I'm sure there were other comments of race that appeared below this.
Unfortunately, this garbage is what appears on the majority of stories' comment boards. And very infrequently, the stories have something to do with a race issue. Often times, it's people hiding behind computer screens spewing their racist views into any and every story that they can. A story about Brandon Marshall discussing his personality disorder has nothing at all to do with race. Whether the diagnosis is part of the 21st century mantra of diagnosing anything and everything can be up for debate- especially the "sex addictions" that Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner supposedly suffered from and needed treatment on. I digress.
The worst comments that I've seen normally come from political stories. Whether a person is extremely left, extremely right or anything in between, I see many articles about politics that go so far off the topic of what the story was about that in the end, it just ends up with a bunch of the same non-sensical name-calling and finger-pointing that never produces quality public discourse. Maybe there are some sites out there where people actually discuss these matters in intelligent forums and actually present facts and ideas into stories rather than calling someone a nutjob for having different ideals than them. I don't read enough political sites to know if there are such sites- mainly because the news I do come across is much like the Brandon Marshall story above, except with political semantics attached to it.
Don't get me wrong - I have my opinions about people and do think some people are nutjobs. But is telling someone this inside a comments section actually going to contribute anything to anything? If you're going to say something, make sure it's not some pointless drabble and "Internet anger" (anger that people feel more comfortable expressing faceless but would never do as such to a person's face). I just made up that term, although perhaps some other genius coined it before me. I digress again.
If you guys write in comments sections of stories, I really hope you're avoiding this crap of name-calling and other nonsense that makes me wish that some sites would disallow comments (in my eyes, not the same as limiting freedom of speech). Not every story on the Internet needs comments following it. For example, if someone signs a free agent contract with a team, all I need to know is what team and how much. If I have opinions about the story, I don't need to share my thoughts to strangers halfway across the world. People should have friends to discuss these things with. Or go to a bar or something and discuss it there - although there are a lot of morons in the general public, so maybe finding a friend or two to discuss something with is a better option.
Note2: You may say that a blog would be a contradiction to this idea of not needing to share my ideas with strangers. But with my limited readership and the fact that I promote this exclusively to friends, I don't feel it to be a contradiction. You may disagree. Anyways, I digress, part 3.
I don't advocate censoring speech - just wish that some people would never talk. So please, if you know anyone who should stop talking, have them read this blog so they can anonymously attack me and call me a piece of liberal white trash. Definitely not politically attached to any party and the trash part I'd have to say is incorrect. At least they'd get the white part right.
Ok, no more digressing. The end.
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