Web Site Comments

More and more websites allow users to post comments on their content. Everything from Youtube to Texts from Last Night to Yahoo News offers the ability for people to offer their wisdom. Personally, I don't believe that this is a positive trend. If you skim them you risk losing your faith in humanity. If you read them in detail you risk losing your sanity.

Let's look at an example from Yahoo news. Of course, this may be unfair because it mentions Barack Obama, the current bane of western society, but I think it will illustrate the point anyway: Obama says Government remains Committed to Gulf Coast Relief

The actual text of the article was four brief paragraphs mentioning that the well was capped and the Obama administration will still be providing some support to the gulf region in the aftermath of the oil spill disaster.

First 5 comments:
"go back to violent Chicago and be with your brothers and sisters, being president is not for you." by Monkey Shines

"Be certain to do it with BP finances.
Despite your persistent previcating." by Watchman 1

"focused like a laser. Deport this monkey to zimbabwe to be with his idol, robert mugabe." by Filthy Sodomite

"That's right, Mr. President. Spend more of our tax dollars bailing another corporation out of a jam. The American working man can work even more hours to get you more tax dollars to blow!" by I eat your h8

"nuke obama" by Weston Jakes

I could maybe see some skepticism as being reasonable, instead we get racism and ignorance from people with ridiculous names. Considering the anonymous nature of the internet, expecting a comments section to yield anything worth reading requires a dangerous level of optimism.

At least on internet forums, the audience tends to have similar interests and ideas so a community can develop, allowing people to know each other and thus be more likely to lead to productive discourse. Additionally, these sites require registration and they can ban your account if you are too abrasive and irritating in your posting. The work required in registering and re-registering if your account is banned tends to keep people who just want to vent some rage from joining the website to do it.

On a news website or youtube, no such community exists and so all you have is the anger of hundreds of people sent into a void. You could argue that they are similar to letters to the editor of a newspaper, but one key difference is that those letters are reviewed by the staff of the newspaper and only appropriate ones are selected. In contrast, comments can be posted to a website with no vetting by staff. The only reason these sections exist is to let people attach their ire to the productive work of someone else, which is quite sad. There's a reason that novels don't come with five blank pages on the end for people to review the book.

And yes, I am a hypocrite for allowing comments on my blog, but on the other hand no one reads my blog except some guy from Denmark so it doesn't matter.