A few blogs I occasionally read treat comments in a way that I don’t understand. To be blunt, they allow asshole behavior of all sorts among the comments. In an in-person discussion this stuff would undermine people’s ability to have an intellectually productive discussion. The same is basically true online. In person, most folk would eventually tell these folk to shut the fuck up, or would go elsewhere to have the conversation. Why this doesn’t happen more often online is beyond me, when it’s so easy - delete and edit the asshole comments. Easy peasy. It’s particularly weird because some of the people who run these blogs teach for a living, a job which requires people in the classroom to occasionally do what I’m suggesting. Ugh.
October 19, 2009
… are you people doing?
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I don’t get comments… bleh.
Comment by JCD — October 19, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
personally i think there’s a broader range of acceptable behaviors in comment boxes. comments can be ignored if someone is uncomfortable with them, whereas the physical presence of a jerk can’t. my criteria has always been a ratio of content to asininity. many commenters say things that would be extremely rude in person but online, so long as they do in fact have something to say, i find that it helps cut through a lot of passive-aggressive bullshit that in person interactions are often so full of (especially among people who teach for a living).
i should admit that i don’t take (non-invasive forms of) online abuse seriously anymore, and may have a hard time fully empathizing with people who do.
oh, and thanks for your response to my last comment. i’ve been knocking about with these questions for a while now. as i’ve been telling everyone, maybe i’ll have something to say about this when i’m feeling slightly less deadline pressure.
Comment by traxus4420 — October 22, 2009 @ 11:32 am
oh one other thing: i’m not especially convinced commenting is about discussion in the sense we expect it to be (and get mad if it’s not) in person. the relatively greater time per response + relatively slower feedback + interpretive difficulties of writing and reading that have been the subject of mountains of treatises = a situation that lends itself to the dialogic monologue. like bathroom graffiti. and i feel like this should be encouraged, to an extent.
Comment by traxus4420 — October 22, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
hi Traxus,
You totally gave like a real answer to my titular rhetorical question, I didn’t expect that. Neat. I can see where you’re coming from here, I think I have a pretty different set of expectations for what I want and don’t want, but as you’ve framed it here I can see a bit more where other folk are coming from w/r/t commenting and so on. I won’t be getting any more tolerant, and I may comment less other places now - cuz I think you’re right about about what’s going on, which is a difference in what folks want out of an interaction - but I don’t be so annoyed about. So thanks!
cheers,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 22, 2009 @ 9:08 pm