Comments Section

So no shit, there I was, ignoring my own rule about reading the comment section.  I suppose it’s only fair that I occasionally beak my own rules - don’t want to discriminate after all.  Nevertheless, I generally like my own rules, and I put them there for very good reasons.  In this case, it has to do with hygiene and self-respect.  Reading what some people write makes me feel wrong, like I have been slamming back distilled ignorance aged in barrels of condescending vitriol.  Varying opinions I can take.  I like them in fact.  But reading the comments section leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth and a general disorientation. 

Years ago when I first went online, the web was just beginning.  Gopher was the king of the internet (ten points if you know what Gopher is).  I first became interested in figuring out what this internet thing was by seeing letters in Rolling Stone which, instead of giving a name and a city, gave a name and a strange set of symbols: xxxx@xxx.edu (virtually all users had an .edu account back then).  I thought it fascinating that people were beginning to identify themselves not by where they were in space, but by where they could be reached.  People were beginning to, essentially, BE their own geography.  Kind of interesting.  When I got online and saw what was happening, I thought that this new way of interacting would eventually create new means of expression, new genres, if you will.  And it did.  The webpage, for example.  The blog, obviously.  And, inhabiting the lower reaches of the Digital Frontier, the comment section.

I love the idea of the comment section, but the actuality makes me queasy (oddly, the exact opposite of my reaction to Wikipedia).   Marketplace of ideas, free exchange, etc. - sounds so good in theory, and, in some formats, in reality.  But the comments sections have just gone wrong, like there is something lurking in there that infects potentially useful attempts to communicate, and, like some alien bacteria or fungus from a bad sci-fi movie, transmutes them into festering blobs of mucus.

Except I don’t think that it is actually alien.  What it really feels like is very human impulses unrestrained by convention.  We are a species with massive variation in temperament, motivation, sense of aesthetic, values and, for want of a better term, source of jollies.  In our actual lives, in our jobs and careers, in our families and with our friends, we express much of what we are.  I wonder, though, if there are bits of us that are begging to be let out, but which we wisely keep leashed and muzzled so as to keep ourselves in the company of gentle people who have agreed to leash and muzzle themselves as well.  Our society can handle quite a bit, but it does ask for a great deal of restraint in return, and the acceptable spectrum of behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs is narrowing all the time.  This is not ideology specific - conservatives, liberals (or “progressives”, if you prefer), punks, rock and rollers - most groups seem to be pulling their boundaries in a bit more tightly these days. 

And it irritates us.  This is why the term “politically correct” has developed.  In actuality, the term really just means “polite”.  Try substituting the words sometime, and see if I’m right.  “Politically correct” allows us to recognize the anger and/or frustration that comes from feeling that there are all those “others” out there that we need to be polite to.  It makes “polite” a negative, which is how we sometimes feel.

The comments section blows all this up.  The anonymity, the lack of a personal community to offend, and the opportunity speak without being accountable for ideas, attitude, or spelling make for a perfect storm, creating a space for disgorging all the half-digested ideas and feelings that have been simmering in our more acidic juices, seeking an outlet.  A new genre indeed, but one expressing old truths.  I suppose this is, on some levels, a healthy thing, reminiscent of a medieval medicinal purge - a psychic high colonic.  I suppose there will be some, and this is the danger, who find meaning in what is spewed there, but I think sifting through the vomitorium that is the comments section is more likely to leave one infected rather than enlightened.  Sometimes breaking a rule reminds us of why it was made in the first place.  Pax.