Updated: Aug. 16, 2017
This is like the wild west, kind of lawless.
**All the personal profile links in this article, like Colette’s, were live at the time of publishing… hard to know what’s happened to everyone since. I haven’t exactly been keeping tabs [Nov. 23, 2020]
On-line comments are not guns – they don’t kill people. And the people who wield them, as in write them, are not having a stand-off at high noon. On-line comments are not deadly but, man, can they be deadly stupid.
They can be uninformed, superficial, emotionally driven, and – frankly – bloody lazy. Plenty of opinions from plenty of people carrying free-speech chips on self-righteous shoulders. On-line comments are a sign of the times.
“Just how many people bother to research and draft for a ‘Comments’ section response, anyway?”
Does it show I’m fed up with people trying to win personal pissing matches in the “Comments” section? …people clawing their way to the top of some imagined pile of respect, in a community comprising whomever read the article – unless of course they only read the headline. Does it show? …the invective, the insults, the spree of one-liners? Commenters affirming, negating, defending, attacking. Pointing out who’s so obviously wrong and what’s so evidently right. Commenters commenting, exercising democracy one comment at a time? On-line comments are the Twitter of– er, hmm, gimme some time to work on that one.
Of course I’m unable to say on-line comments kill people but not because they actually don’t kill people. It’s because, in that analogy, on-line comments are just the bullets. Keyboards would be the guns. And it’s still people pulling the trigger by pressing ‘send’ – I’m sure there’s a triggering joke in here somewhere. For now, enough to say that guns don’t post comments, people do.
Time was when sending a letter-to-the-editor to your chosen publication was the main public recourse although you had no guarantee it would be published, or at least not published in full. But then came the Internet, the great equalizer. I can only suspect that, way back when, when that first on-line article permitted readers to leave comments, the author or editor or publisher proudly lifted a glass of wine to rejoice the enabling of the public voice. One step forward for free speech. Here’s to democracy.
How often I’ve read an article, then perused the on-line comments, looking for a broader sense of opinion: “Maybe I’ll encounter some different perspectives, pick up a hyperlink or two.” This does still happen, and for me, it’s what makes on-line comments worthwhile. It also means I’m relying on the other commenters to offer anything of substance. But, obviously (…is it obvious?) substance doesn’t always just happen. Then again, I suppose it’s pretty naïve to expect that it would.
And if you thought, in the sheer amount of comments for just one single article, that the law of averages would help, then you probably haven’t read too many on-line comments. They often far, far surpass the length of the article and illustrate far, far less than broader opinion or different perspectives or anything useful at all about the topic. Just as often they proliferate because somebody needed to win.
How often is someone’s on-line comment about the article as compared to that commenter seeking personal affirmation or recognition as some kind of uber-reliability source? “As a former [ masterclass expert in this field ] with [ world-renowned qualifications-slash-certified expertise ] and [ decades ] of experience, my post here is [ untouchable truth ], and you’re all fools and dead to me except if you reply with reverent admiration.” How often does an on-line comment chain turn into a personal on-line shoving match? And how often has somebody replied along these lines: “You’re pretty tough when it’s not face-to-face…” ?
Surely nobody thinks they’re even beginning to solve some issue in the on-line Comments. Do they? At least, they couldn’t possibly think so when all they’ve written is a sentence or two. Right? At least, when they’ve written sentences. But, unquestionably, the essay-length on-line comment is the exception to the rule. Isn’t it? At least, it is in the Age of Twitter – wait, sorry, I already slammed Twitter. This time, I’ll go with Google making us stupid (not for the first time). By the way, even shortened attention spans have been called into question (have a look, neither’s a long read). My own sense, for what it’s worth, is that we attend to what stimulates us the most although – egregiously – I have no research to back my opinion, and if any of you trolls call me on that, I’ll comment you back. Must be almost time for that trigger joke.
Are people commenting when maybe they should be writing an article of their own? Would that be too much responsibility to bear? to ask? Would writing an article require too much effort? People seem to care enough to leave a comment yet not enough to offer something more substantive than a line or two, or a paragraph the odd time. Even a few paragraphs, that one time by that one person, but anything truly edited for cohesion – are you kidding, what are we, journalists? How many of us are writers, period, much less paid ones? Heaven forbid anyone be expected to offer more than a few lines of opinion masquerading as oh-such-obvious-fact, or one-liner, or dogmatic tirade! (Yes, I not only see the irony, I intended it.) Leave all that responsibility crap for whoever else. Whomever, actually, but that would mean caring.
Who are you, anyway, that you’d present yourself in a manner as superficial as on-line comments, then expect to be taken seriously? Who are you, that you’d conflate your real-life person with your on-line persona in such a way that one belies the other? Which one is demonstrating the true you? Who are you, to be taking this so personally right now when, in fact, right now I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt? Cynicism aside, everyone can think – hence my frustration. If on-line comments suggest anything, they suggest that emotion rules, not thinking.
Don’t misconstrue – thinking and emotion, I’d say, both occur, but by default (I’d say), emotion controls thinking more than the other way around. Far more rarely does rationality show up beyond the article itself, if even there.
Below is an edited chain of comments that I cut & pasted from an NPR article posted to Facebook, about the bombing of the Manchester arena following the Ariana Grande concert in 2017.
To be precise, these comments that I cut & pasted are from the Facebook post, not NPR’s website. I also present these comments as a single, focused discussion when, in fact, other peoples’ semi-related comments had appeared in between some of these, responding to still other people. But the way comments appear is evidently controlled more by their time stamp, when they were posted, than by which person receives a reply in the thread. So, in selecting only these comments here, I tried to maintain the direct discussion between particular people, back and forth. Finally, I’ve published their Facebook names with hyperlinks because all this is publicly published anyway, and nobody’s owed any shelter.
Rather than take sides, see if you can read this thread to understand my point, the futility of trying to solve such grand issues in a Comments section, the pointlessness of on-line comments in general. (Yes, I see the irony in having my own Comments section below. I even intended it.)
Ask of each comment, and each commenter…
- what, really, is the motive behind this comment getting not just written but posted?
- what, really, is the response that this person…
- believes for themselves?
- presumes from the other person?
- seeks from anyone else (like us) who may be reading?
Read not only with self-awareness but with other-awareness, with empathy. But please resist taking sides on the issues, irrespective of your own feelings, because the point here is the comments having been crafted and shared, not the terror incident or the politics that are introduced. A tangential point is to acknowledge that it’s possible and sometimes productive to keep our feelings and our rationality separate.
The Thread
James Alford What a great freedom festival! I just don’t know what we’d do without all the freedom that comes with unfettered access to semiautomatic weapons. Thanks for sharing this awesome display of our enviable freedom!
How do other nations cope without our awesome brand of freedom?! I mean, other than longer life expectancy, ultra low crime rates, drastically lower prison populations, and better overall quality of life.
Yep. Would never wanna swap my bullet-y freedom for any of that.
Scott Macleod How are the Ariana Grande concerts in places without freedom?
James Alford Scott, they do have WAY less freedom, don’t they?! They only have 0.23 gun homicides per 100,000. We have almost 11!!! Murkah!
Scott Macleod James, that is a meaningless statistic. Here I’ll show you:
Last year cars killed:
Switzerland 269
Israel 263
Sweden 285
Norway 145
Australia 1,299
Canada 2,075
United States 36,166
Deaths from drowning, children under 14:
Switzerland 3
Israel 8
Sweden 4
Norway 1
Australia 33
Canada 28
United States 548
Deaths from alcohol per year:
Switzerland 1,600
Israel n/a
Sweden 2,222
Norway 1,016
Australia 5,554
Canada 8,100
United States 88,000
The United States is an outlier on all of these. You can do the same breakdown with antibiotics. You can do it with hot water heaters. Or with deaths from bees. And the US will have higher death rates.
Jacqui Parker Percentages based on overall population would make more sense in your example.
Seth Martin Did anyone in this thread actually read the article?
Scott Macleod The numbers don’t change when broken down per capita. The US is still an outlier. Know why? Because deaths from X will always be higher in countries with more X. Determining causality is much more complicated. Would taking X away eliminate those deaths? Or would X just be substituted for something else and what would have been deaths from X become deaths from Y? This is what’s important.
Jim Chan Total death doesn’t equal to death rate. What are you a 2nd grader?
Scott Macleod Jim, see comment above. Per capita break down does not change the analysis.
Amon-Raa Valencia Scott Macleod the replacement theory can be checked by looking at life expectancy.
Do the countries you point out have higher life expectancy than the US?
James Alford I’m afraid you’re unacquainted with how percentages work, Scott.
If I have 10 tomatoes in my garden, and 2 of them are rotten, and you have 10,000 tomatoes, and 200 of them are rotten, then my problem is still 10 times bigger than yours, even though you have 100 times more rotten tomatoes.
Find a local 5th grader. He’ll be happy to provide more illustrations.
Wesley D. Stoner So Scott Macleod, in your example, if X = guns then the US logically has more gun deaths because there are more guns, right? Where do you think I am going next….
Scott Macleod So by that logic, James, those other countries have the same problem the US does from guns? Please respond without insults.
Scott Macleod <<Scott Macleod the replacement theory can be checked by looking at life expectancy.
Do the countries you point out have higher life expectancy than the US?>>
Other factors go into determining life expectancy. Access to healthcare for example.
James Alford Nevermind, Scott. The original stat said it all. The U.K. (who you brought up) has a gun homicide rate 44 times lower than ours. If you can’t grasp that incredibly straightforward piece of empirical data, then we don’t have a starting point.
Chris Toscano James Alford, you have unlocked Master Troll Level 99. Fine work sir! Look at all the ammosexuals that you have up in arms.
Carrie Anne 😂Ammosexuals
Margaret Moore Bennett Scott Macleod, I am a statistics teacher, you show a basic lack of understanding for how statistics work. You are a poster child for why the GOP is successful with the un and under-educated.
Scott Macleod <<Nevermind, Scott. The original stat said it all. The U.K. (who you brought up) has a gun homicide rate 44 times lower than ours. If you can’t grasp that incredibly straightforward piece of empirical data, then we don’t have a starting point.>>
A) Again, this stat is meaningless. It tells us nothing about causality or how public policy changes the death rates.
B) Those are GUN death rates. Of course a country with 330 million GUNS is going to have higher death rates from GUNS. Just like a country with greater access to antibiotics has more deaths from antibiotics. It tells us nothing about whether antibiotics or guns are good or bad for society.
Scott Macleod How about explaining it to me Margaret rather than resorting to ad hominem and appeals to authority?
Scott Macleod I am not uneducated. I am not a republican. There’s two misses. What are the odds your third claim that I demonstrate a lack of understanding for statistics is correct.
David Houghton Well, you led with raw numbers and not per capita numbers. Not exactly putting your best foot forward on the stats front.
Tandy Fitzgerald Scott Macleod does that mean a US citizen is more reckless when it comes to driving that the rest of the world and less aware when it comes to their children swimming or less aware of health issues and oblivious to the affects of alcohol? Man US citizens really do prefer to live on the edge far more than anyone else in the world…I guess freedom has more prices then just serving in the military.
Scott Macleod I led with what I had available to copy and paste to demonstrate what I was getting at. I agree it would have been better to break them down per capita. Alas, I’m on my phone and these comments move quickly.
Normally when you see this argument, though, it involves raw numbers. As I have said, what I was illustrating does not change when broken down per capita.
Nick Lucas Scott Macleod My favorite part about your posts is that you are trying to dismiss data because of your claims of causality but you make your first statement of the Ariana Grande concert without the same rule of thought.
What gun would have somehow stopped that bomb from exploding? Why didn’t a person with a gun stop the OK bombing or Boston bombing?
This is the problem with bias is we tend to not be able to apply the same logic to our own beliefs that we do others we disagree with.
Michael Dugger Scott Macleod no gun would’ve have stopped a silent bomb carrier Scott.
Scott Macleod Nick, my original comment was a quip. It was a snarky counter to the OP. I feel like you are reading too much into it.
Nevertheless, it does illustrate what I mentioned earlier. When X is not available, people will substitute with Y and nearly the same amount of people would likely die anyway. Why commit suicide with a $500 gun when you can do it with $3 of rope? Looking at guns only is a disingenuous way of looking at the problem. To be sincere, we would need to look at all homicides to determine causality.
I have not made the claim that access to guns will stop bombings.
Bill Melton “Would it make you happier, little girl, if they were pushed out of a seventh floor window?” Archie Bunker
Jenny Caldwell Scott Macleod Those aren’t death rates, those are simply the numbers of deaths. Death rates are population-based, i.e. # of deaths by drowning/1000. US death *rates* by gun violence are indeed much higher than other countries.
Paul Errman James Alford go cry yourself a river. When their violent crime rate drops and they actually have a population of over 300 million call us.
Onica Annika Scott Macleod you can’t take a gun into a concert permit or not. Stupid example.
Onica Annika Scott Macleod Snowflake are you triggered? 😂😂
Scott Macleod <<Scott Macleod you can’t take a gun into a concert permit or not. Stupid example.>>
I never said you could or that you should. Why are you bringing this irrelevant insight into the conversation?
Scott Macleod <<Scott Macleod Those aren’t death rates, those are simply the numbers of deaths. Death rates are population-based, i.e. # of deaths by drowning/1000. US death *rates* by gun violence are indeed much higher than other countries.>>
I know this. I never disagreed. US death rates by gun violence are higher. I never claimed otherwise. What I dispute is the significance of this information.
Scott Macleod We also have higher death RATES due to drowning, alcohol consumption, motor vehicle accidents, and a whole host of other phenomena. Why?
Looking at RATES and ignoring all other factors gives people a misleading glimpse into reality.
Andrew Scribner NUMBERS HURT BRAIN!!
Doug Bolantis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0
Choose Your Own Crime Stats
Onica Annika Scott Macleod YOU WROTR “How are the Ariana Grande concerts in places without freedom? 👌🏻”
By comparing the bombing in Manchester to carrying guns and implying people would be safer at concerts WITH GUNS is how THIS WAS BROUGHT UP.
You cannot shoot a suicide bomber without expecting to have an explosion. It would have made absolutely NO DIFFERENCE!
Next are comments following NPR’s report on two bounty hunters who engaged a fugitive at a car dealership in Texas, also in 2017 and also posted to Facebook.
The Next Thread
‘Jonathan Fitzgerald So I’m starting to get a little pissed by all this bounty hunter bashing. While a little rough around the edges. Boba Felt was a pretty decent guy. And could tell some great jokes, once he got a few drinks in him. Cad Bane was a generous and loving fellow. He was known to work at the soup kitchens all the time. So chill out. They aren’t ALL bad.
Candy Ellman Johannes That may be but when you see the video it’s quite clear that the two bounty hunters handled the situation very badly. Because they were like that doesn’t mean they were good at their JOB. It doesn’t mean they’re bad. Just that they shouldn’t have been handling this job.
Jonathan Fitzgerald I think you have never heard of Star Wars or a joke.
Isaac Unson Wow, what a tragic and visceral story! Should I maybe post a comment to spur discussion about bounty hunting, or the lack of consideration for things going south very badly?
Nahhhh, that’s original content worthy of discussion. Why not just be cynical and predictable instead and make the usual jokes about guns?
Russell Good It’s fitting this happened in a death merchants offices. More people are killed with vehicles, than anything else, and yet anyone can buy a car without a background check. Unlicensed drivers and unregistered vehicles are hurtling past the innocent in their thousands at this very minute. When will we stop the insanity?
Candy Ellman Johannes A death merchant? No, they’re not. They can’t control how someone is going to drive the cars they buy. And a background check will not tell you how they will do that. Just drive around our community in Texas and you will see a lot of idiots on the road. Most of whom would clear any background check you might think they should conduct.
Patrick Oleary Bounty hunters, we don’t need their scum!
Dan Varns Right, the bounty hunters are the bad guy, not the wanted criminal who assaulted a police officer. Got it. Brilliant, take you all day to come up with that??
Patrick Oleary Dan Varns whooooosh
Marc Brown Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold
Kristopher Danger Why read the article when I can just comment about how much I don’t like or understand firearms?
Isaac Unson Nah, that required critical thinking!
PaulandCarla Todaro Why would anyone want to watch that? Why would you tell us to? So sad that we can watch such violence and then continue to scroll.
Marcus Harrison You idiots this wasn’t about exercising freedom.You people are so stupid!
Christopher Hill How do libtards turn this into a gun control argument
I hardly even know where to begin with either discussion. The responses, pardon the pun, speak for themselves, from the aggressors to the defenders to the cooler heads to the comic relief. I don’t even say “aggressors” and “defenders” with any political bent so much as simply noting name-calling and tone. The fact that one person or another, with [whichever] political beliefs, is the aggressor or the defender, here, is not my point, which is why I cautioned to read without taking sides – everybody can be mean-spirited or good-willed, aggressive or defensive. My point is that everybody can also think and listen and reflect, if only they wish to do so, which means more targeted effort and more controlled emotional reaction.
The futility of quoted statistics, which are then attacked and defended, as are the people themselves, in a forum that is informal and, for the most part, unmonitored (perhaps beyond hate speech or something that Facebook would moderate) …what’s the point of it all? Once these people close their browsers, what does each one feel he or she has accomplished? If little to nothing, then why even participate? If something more, then who besides themselves is measuring their effectiveness and, anyway, to what end? And who besides themselves even has a right to judge their effectiveness, especially since this cast of characters – evidently – would have plenty more to say about being judged, and we just kick-start another thread!
Once they close their browsers, what does anybody feel they’ve accomplished? If little to nothing, then why even participate? If something more, then who besides themselves is measuring their effectiveness and, anyway, to what end?
How many of you just now reading saw either of these comment threads before reading them here in my post? Which audience needs to see these threads, and why?
Are Comments sections some kind of exercise of free speech? If so, are they worth the trouble? On-line comments are not always anonymous, but they’re also not face-to-face, and that’s perhaps most significant here as to the point of being responsible and thorough before posting something regarding another person. However, it’s most significant in both positive and negative ways – positive because we owe the other person enough dignity to offer them an intelligent reply that respects their point of view, and negative because we can insult the bastard without (likely) ever feeling some physical repercussion. At the opening, I called on-line commenters lazy. Maybe they’re cowardly, too.
Geez, how seriously am I taking this? They’re just blog comments, for goodness’ sake!
Oh please, it’s a comments section not a peer-reviewed journal.
Here’s another partial comment thread, cut & pasted from The Atlantic website, this time without any comments removed from in between – these are consecutive responses to an article about America’s intellectual decline – a topic not too dissimilar from this very post, even though I disagree in detail with a number of the writer’s claims. However, again, the point here is not to debate the issues. It’s to note the motives and tone behind the comments.
The Last Thread
“but also because Christianity, for example, made Western civilization a possibility in the first place.”
What a truly odd assertion. What is your basis for it?
Start with Gutenberg. Then move on to education, art, medicine, culture, and philosophy. Don’t forget Martin Luther and Henry VIII.
Yes the Greeks and Arabs and others made their contributions. But how did those contributions find their way to becoming building blocks for Western Civ? Via the Romans (Christians by the end) and the Crusades (Christian holy wars). For centuries it was literate clergymen who preserved the ancient knowledge which would eventually set the stage for the Enlightenment.
Like it or not, Christianity is at least as inextricably entwined with the building of Western Civilization as any other influence one could name.
It’s truly odd that you find this overwhelmingly obvious fact truly odd.
No, Christianity made western civilization what it is today. It’s not what made it possible. However, we can never know what it would look like had Christianity not exerted the power it did.
In other news, if your Mom had chosen a different man to be your father, not only can we never know what you’d look like today–it wouldn’t in fact be you. That child might well not have even existed.
Europe’s faced many existential threats over the millennia. Change just a few events, and Western Civilization wouldn’t have survived. Subtract Christianity, and there’s a strong chance the region becomes conquered by neighboring civilizations, and never even develops the thing we now call Western Civilization.
And that’s as far as I need to go chasing after this particularly nonsensical counter-factual.
exactly, it’s a counter factual, no need to chase it.
“exactly, it’s a counter factual, no need to chase it.”
Asking what might have happened if different decisions had been made is often vital to understanding historical events. Although the process is inherently fraught with ambiguity, it’s a valid exercise.
Your reply makes it seem like perhaps you don’t grasp the purpose of a counter-factual.
This counter-factual is nonsensical. Not all of them are.
yes I understand that as well. This is getting a little exasperating. My only point in this was that one cannot attribute western civilization’s existence to christianity. At most, one can say that christianity was instrumental in the history and current state of western civilization.
Had David simply crafted a more thorough reply to begin with, as he indicates in the final response of this chain, he might have pre-empted all these back-and-forth remarks. More complete remarks might have stirred new ideas, better avenues for discussion, alternatives for research, and just a more thorough model for others to consider. And, sure, where his exchange with Duncan Tweedy was essentially civil and pain-free, he has still made the potential for a bunch of negative things to occur…
(i) people might have accepted his cursory remarks, thereby reinforcing (albeit superficially) their own beliefs in that echo-chamber kind of way
(ii) people might have rejected his cursory remarks, thereby reinforcing (albeit superficially) their own beliefs in that polarising kind of way
(iii) people might have misread, misunderstood, misconstrued, or otherwise missed the context of his remarks and, additionally, might have failed to follow up this thread as far as the point where I have cut & pasted it here
(iv) as a result of (ii) or (iii), people might have grown upset or angry with his cursory remarks and taken him on with vitriol, or worse, simply have begun insulting him outright, neither of which contributes to any constructive progress but, rather, destructive regress and both of which inspire ill feelings that those people now carry into everyday life, and which might later be echoed – on-line or off-line – by still others
(v) some other outcome I haven’t mentioned
Had David afforded more time and thought to (a) the kind of response that could adequately convey his thinking, and also (b) the kinds of responses he might elicit from people who read his remarks if he were to write them this way or that way, then he wouldn’t have responded the way we find here. Yet it hardly seems worth critiquing these, or any, on-line comments at all, they’re so ubiquitous! Yes, I see the irony; in fact, I intended it.
Just how many people bother to research and draft for a “Comments” section response, anyway? The whole concept of the on-line “Comments” section seems tailor-made to evade the vetting and sober second-thought of taking a breath and waiting the requisite 24 hours before responding to messages we don’t like. I’d pay $49 for the t-shirt that reads, “Who took the ‘Editor’ out of ‘Letter to the Editor’? Send me $50 and I’ll tell you.”
Obviously, the question is not how many bother to research and draft. It’s not even a question of whether to bother researching and drafting. It’s a question of whether to bother engaging in the on-line comments, to begin with. And I describe it as “bother” because research and drafting mean “work,” i.e. “What a blasted bother!” as in making a deliberate driven effort versus the blurt of perfunctory emotional reaction, which has always been a human foible and which, these days, seems even that much more common.
All that bother for… what, exactly? For someone to reply with one-line invectives? Who are we trying to reach, on-line? And, in light of that, who are we trying to be?
“Who are you on-line? The person versus the persona – it’s a concept worth considering.”
We’re all still responsible for the things we say, especially when they get published, and especially when “published” now means forever to be seen on-line (a consideration discussed here as well) – a newspaper or a book might at least fall out of print or get tossed in the trash. We might consider being responsible for the writing of an article, so why not for the offering of a comment? All the people I’ve quoted here have plenty to offer, I suspect, given their apparent literacy. But taking the time and resources at their disposal and using them in a more constructive way evidently hasn’t happened. Can that be changed?
What incentive would motivate these, or any, people to offer more when commenting on-line? Do people care about a growing reputation, however much or little it permeates the Cloud of e-culture? Who do they think they are? Who do they think that we think they are? Do they even care what others think they are? Do they care, themselves? There’s so little accountability, no formal editing or vetting as might be found in print publication, aside from moderation, as I’ve said, and that often simply automated. Sometimes there’s a log-in procedure via Facebook or Disqus, say, for whatever assurance that offers. It allowed me to publish selected commenters, here.
“Who are we on-line?” asks Flora the Explorer. It’s a question worth considering before we ever touch a keyboard. So, okay: who are you on-line? The person versus the persona – it’s a concept worth considering since I suspect 99% of on-line commenters will never meet their fellows face-to-face. Yet, precisely because of that physical separation, I suspect few care to consider (or even just bother to actively recognise?) this concept. Yes, that’s ironic, and it’s a shame. If people did care more (or at least actively acknowledge?) the fact that dialogue comprises more than self, how much more might a conversation yield? As it is, on-line dynamics affect our selves so subtly yet profoundly that the Internet, the great democratic equalizer, is proving its ability to take us one step forward and two steps back.
In and of themselves, given their entire context including their culture, article & blog comments tend to run the risk of oversimplifying issues that warrant and deserve far greater diligence and time spent in meaningful appreciation. Issues that deserve… really? Why? Well, for starters, somebody published an article about [whatever it was], so now it’s out there for public consideration. Moreover, somebody decided that publishing [whatever it was] was worth the bother, and like you and me and everyone, that somebody deserves some basic dignity and respect, whether we ultimately agree with their published material or not. At a minimum, that requires reading the article, if not subsequently researching a bit more. Beyond that, it requires crafting responses of your own that do right by the author who invested the time and effort to create an article worthy of your comment – not “worthy” because you agree but “worthy” because you bothered to respond. Boy, all this bother! Why bother?
“The Internet gives everyone a voice!” … just a shame that so many decide, instead, to use it superficially, far beneath both its potential as well as their own
The Rhetorical WHY, itself, is a response not unlike what I suggest here – like anyone, I can’t cover it all in one go, but at the least, I can offer something more than a one-liner. The rest of you deserve that much, as I deserve likewise from the rest of you. So, in fact, it is about deserving: if one deserves, then all deserve – either no one is above any other, as far as it involves basic respect for human dignity, or we’re all of us bound for war, waged by all upon all.
For the record, this time I’m not trying to be ironic, though it might seem so now more than ever before. This time, it’s all too serious.
If people considered article & blog comments as I’ve tried to frame them here, as a matter of respect for human dignity, then comments – and public discourse, altogether – could be a whole lot different, and probably more constructive. Instead of comments, maybe people would compose entire articles of their own, which I remember is what Internet apologists used to boast: “The platform of the Internet is the great equalizer!” and “The Internet gives everyone a voice!” and “The Internet is democracy at its finest!” …that sort of thing. Shame that so many decide, instead, to use it superficially, far beneath both its potential as well as their own.
So, please, follow up on your own, comment and post, publish and be responsible. Contribute constructively. Most importantly, be thoughtful and thorough because that’s respectful of everybody else’s time and effort and bother. No one can cover every single detail, and every person has two cents to add of their own. But don’t be fooled by that miniscule metaphor – two cents refers to humility, so please make an effort to offer more than a reactive outburst.
Thanks, everybody, for leaving whatever considered comments you might have, and don’t let the end of this post be the end of your opinion.
The Rhetorical WHY 