Comment Content
Carrie Brownstein, of Sleater-Kinney and NPR music guru fame, posted a thing today about comments. Specifically, about the slew of nasty, awful comments that proliferate on sites like Youtube and what the proliferation of comments like these say, if anything, about us today. I’ve seen enough of these comments to just kind of mentally filter them out – kind of like how, during campus political season, my eyes just stop seeing sidewalk chalk on my way to work.
The worst I’ve seen, probably equivalent or even surpassing the terribleness of Youtube comments, have been on the website for my local paper. These are bad because the people behind these comments, if they are in fact different people and not just the same horrible misanthrope posting with multiple accounts…these people live in my town! My neighbors might be psychopath ultra arch-conservative assholes who actually believe that every homeless person, Mexican, and Topekan should be rounded up and shot! For that reason I never look below any news stories or commentaries that are vaguely political on the LJ World. Otherwise I’d be hyper suspicious and paranoid around half the people I saw on the street.
Occasionally, though, they are just so over the top ridiculous that you just can’t help but laugh. Here’s a news story about a cat who accidentally hitched a ride in a van to california, and made it back. Totally cute, innocuous fluff piece sans controversy, right?
WRONG. Somehow that still sparked a mean comment that led to a mini-flame war:
Why was this cat running about “at large”? There is a City leash law for cats. It really needs to be seriously enforced.
I’m pretty fed up with “kitty” urinating and defecating in my gardens; howling at other cats and other “tom catting around”…..and I don’t really care to read about “…they’re an outside pet….”. Nonsense. Keep your cats inside please or within your view at all times. That’s the law. Also, you’re welcome to come on over and clean all the feces your cats leave…..
I think there are, and always have been, people that are just naturally that cantankerous. Posting on the internet just makes it easier for these people to share that with the rest of the world, instead of just the few people that happen to stroll in front of their house and bear witness to their porch-hollerin’ tirades.