This is more mild grumbling than Pit-worthy ranting.
I’ve developed a compulsion to click on the comments section at the end of online news stories, and it has caused me to despair for the future of our Republic.
Illiterate, unintelligible, meandering ranting. 90% tea-party ditto-head talking points; virtually any topic will generate a comment bashing Obama and/or all the crooks in congress (term limits seems to be the panacea that will solve our nation’s ills).
Aside from the dope, I’ve only found one place where the comments are not completely stupid - the online edition of Doonesbury on Yahoo. This may not redeem the future of the republic, however.
The comments on Yahoo News stories are particularly horrifying.
Any story about a gay person, or gay rights, will have thousands of comments containing the most hateful vitriol you can think of.
Any story about Obama will have comments openly calling for his assassination, along with plenty of overt racism.
It’s an absolute cesspool. I wonder why Yahoo even bothers to have such a feature. Or maybe it likes hosting hundreds of thousands of pages of hate speech on its servers.
I think a lot of news sites are coming to this realization, because I’m seeing a lot of stories marked “user comments are not being accepted on this article.”
There was a time when I would’ve considered that a bad thing, but it’s almost a necessity now that the trolls—whether paid shills or useful idiots—have overrun the world.
For some reason, the extreme right feels the need to shout down anything that doesn’t fit their worldview far more than the extreme left does. Both extremes are certifiable assholes, but only one froths at the mouth openly and publicly with such astounding frequency, as if it will win more to their side. That’s why the racists and homophobes dominate those conversations - nowhere else will they find a fellow community of disgusting loonies.
Fully agree with the OP. I have the same addiction, especially with political articles.
There’s always hate, misspellings, someone saying what some god expects of us, etc.
I used to get really angry at them years ago. On the advice of my dad, an octogenarian, he says, “Then don’t read them. Read a book.”
But there is one good thing about reading them… it makes me (and all Dopers, I’m sure) feel smarter about themselves. Like, “At least I’m not this fucking dumb.”
Just based on the pure volume, there have to be tens of thousands of people who spend all of their free time finding places on the internet to shout this sort of stuff. I’m sure they’re the ones passing along the gigantic network of right wing bullshit glurge e-mails too.
Almost every online comments section, no matter what the subject, seems to degenerate into “kill all the Muslims!” some of these apes really have a one-track mind
For some reason yesterday was Racism Day in the local news outlets’ comments. Perhaps they switch off and every other Wednesday is Half-Off Homophobia Day.
And delete 99% of the comments, and have to deal with cries of “censorship!” and “left-wing MSM!”. At that point, what is the point of having comments turned on?
The idea of allowing comments on articles is perhaps sound, but I don’t see how it would ever end up as anything other than some sort of riff on Gresham’s law - the only people likely to comment are ones with strong feelings one way or the other, stupid will attract stupid, and smart will give up.
I read the local news just to enjoy the comments of the local idiots (who by the way are identified by their real names, which could be helpful someday). I find some of the comments especially fascinating, such as “OMG” and “SMH”.
One depressing thing about the internet is that it seems to have given everyone the impression that their opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s. So they can announce their stupid bullshit as if nobody’s ever heard it before and honestly believe that they are contributing to the conversation.
some of these apes really have a one-track mind