Internet Commentators & the Wild World Wide Web

I love the internet (no surprise there) and read several websites on a regular basis. I am not, however, a commentator on any of those sites. I remember this annoying guy I knew in grad school - he was arrogant and condescending and he hated all vegetables and never ate them (who hates all vegetables?!?) - lecturing me once on internet commentators (not sure how we got on the topic) and how so much of what is important on the internet takes places in the comments section. He said the whole point of posting something on the internet was so that someone could respond in the comments and spark this whole dialogue. I disagree(d) because often I discuss articles and posts I have read on the internet in real life with other people, thus having a dialogue in person; and because the comments sections on so many websites can be horrible, mean and nasty places.

Salon is in theory a cool website. I don't visit it anywhere near as often as I used to though, and I think a large part of that is because of the comments section. I am very surprised that Salon does not hire comments sections moderators to better control the environment in the comments. People call each other horrible names all the time and insult the writers on the site (especially female writers) on a regular basis. Overall, I find the site has a lot of misogynist and racist commentators and I can't believe the site doesn't do something about that. I think the Globe and Mail is also one of the worst, which I find off. The G and M, Canada's national newspaper as it calls itself, can be really smug and kind of annoying. I still go to its site (almost) every day because they do have pretty good news, most of the time. What completely baffles me though, is the amount of hatred and fighting that goes in the comments sections for most articles. The commentators can be so consistently cruel that it saddens me to think these are the people who read the G and M. Moreover, as with Salon, there are so many misogynists writing in the comments who consistently blame feminists and often radical feminists for all problems ever. It's really sad to read. I'm sure the majority of those commentators wouldn't ever call people (let alone complete strangers) the types of names and insults they repeatedly write in the comments sections, hiding behind their computer screens. 

When I first started reading Jezebel in 2009, I briefly entertained the thought of commentating on it. I didn't have time (or probably more accurately didn't want to make time) to be one of those commentators who would comment all the time on almost every post but the articles on the site interested me and I wanted to occasionally be able, if I felt like it, to write a comment. I decided against creating a Jezebel account, however, because you had to do a trial run. I can't remember the details anymore but you were allowed to comment a few times and if the editors of the site (and maybe other commentators I can't remember?) thought your comments were good enough you were allowed in. But if they weren't you weren't. Maybe it was really easy to get let in, I don't know... But I do remember being turned off by that because even though I thought it was very smart of Jezebel to have a whole list of commentating instructions including saying they wanted people who could write in full sentences with no spelling or grammatical errors, I just didn't feel like getting judged on my comments and possibly even turned away. I agreed with their desire to have a comment section where people valued intelligent comments, but I also just didn't want the pressure of having to write good comments to be let in in the first place.

All that said, I used to really enjoy reading the comments on Jezebel because it was a place where people wrote thoughtful, intelligent comments and when they disagreed with each other, mostly did so in a civil manner. Even though I loved the mix of celebrity gossip and serious feminist issues being discussed, I stopped reading the site once it switched over to its new format sometime in early 2011. The new interface was very user unfriendly and a lot of the best commentators left. I also found that around the time of the changeover the commentators were getting more and more annoying. A lot of the comments were so self-righteous, smug and judgmental and the disagreements started to get more and more uncivil with people saying sometimes fairly mean and cutting things to each other. I remember that some commentators would jump to conclusions about others so fast, and it started to get kind of sad to read. For a good example of what I mean, check out the comments section on this post.

I find the whole idea of people fighting in the comments sections of various websites very weird. Is it really worth it to fight (mostly) anonymously with someone you've never met over the internet? Don't you have better things to do with your time? I don't like fights in real life (who does?) but know they are sometimes necessary to work out issues, etc. Fights with strangers online seem always unnecessary to me though, and yet they happen on a fairly regular basis. A guy I knew at Berkeley, M., told me his favourite way to talk with someone about difficult issues in their friendship/ relationship/etc was through gchat (to be honest he told me this in 2006 and he really said through "AIM" but I'd like to think that by now, if he still favours chatting, he's switched to gchat) because it was a conversation happening in real time but by writing instead of speaking you were able to think a bit more about what you wanted to say. Although I prefer to talk things out face to face, his reasoning makes a lot of sense to me. Fighting with strangers in the comments sections of websites, however, doesn't.

The Hairpin is by far the best place on the internet for commentators. The (mostly female) commentators on there (and there are a lot of regulars!) almost all seem like cool, interesting people and everyone is always civil and kind to each other. There are the odd disagreements but they never descend into the pathetic fights present all over the rest of the internet. One of my favourite things to read on the Hairpin is the Friday Open Thread. Every Friday afternoon, one of the editors puts up the Friday Open Thread post in which commentators have free reign to write about whatever they want. It's amazing! I have always been interested in other people's lives - their interests, friendships, love lifes, stories, general likes and dislikes, etc. etc. - and this post provides me with windows into other people's lives every week (and in a relatively non-creepy way as they are choosing to post these things online). It's so much fun to read! In some ways I think it would be really cool to be a commentator on the Hairpin (to delurk as people say when they finally make a commentating account) but the thing is, I love lurking. I know I'd prefer the Friday Open Thread as a reader than as a contributor. I love just reading/observing the comments without actually being a part of the conversations. And, I also just don't want to make the time. I just hope The Hairpin will never go the way of Jezebel and that I can keep reading all the various insightful comments week in week out.