Guys. Seriously. The comments. They need to stop. I'm not talking about comments on my blog, or comments on my opinions, or comments about the way I'm choosing to live my life, or whatever. I'm talking about internet comment sections. They need to stop. Don't know what I mean?
Take a moment to think about the last time you saw a constructive, well thought-out discussion about a potentially controversial topic in the comment section of a website. No? Think about the first time, then. Still nothing?
Now think about the last time you saw something like this:
"Wow, whoever wrote this is clearly retarded. It's different from my opinion, so clearly this person is just stupid."
-GuyWho'sAlwaysRight
[23 Comments]
"lol wow loser ok y u take the tiem to rite this if u dont like lol faget kill urself"
-420blazeit2011
[Show more comments]
Look familiar? Probably because this is probably about 99.99% of comment sections on the internet. Doesn't even matter what the comment box is attached to, whether it's news articles, Facebook status updates, YouTube videos, Kickstarter pages for bringing back Reading Rainbow (that exists, by the way, and it's totally funded), anything and everything is a victim. My recent favorite is a lovely top comment from the article at [this link] detailing how poorly McDonald's is responding to its employees' demands for better wages. It reads as follows:
Ivan Saucedo-
"It's
funny how flipping a burger pays as much as working at a hospital in
direct patient care..... If we can't get a raise for savings lives you
can't get a rise for making people fat.."
(Oh, and in case you were wondering, that is his real name, and that link is to the facebook profile he chose to leave this little gem of a comment with. I openly encourage you to send him a nice message explaining exactly how he is incorrect. Tell him the internet police sent you.)
Now, this is about to get really angry and ranty, so if you can't spot what's wrong with that comment, you might wanna pull up a seat and get ready to take notes. I'm about to give you a crash course in what your mothers should have spent your childhoods teaching you instead of drinking heavily while you ate paint chips in the corner.
Now I know that there's just something about the moment that you realize you have total anonymity on the internet that just makes you want to grab the nearest sharp thing and sodomize your neighbor with it. It's like when you threw pencils at that nerdy kid when your elementary school teacher turned the lights out. Only this time you can just lynch him from the ceiling fan and nobody can even see you snicker and send you to the principal's office. The thing you need to understand though, is that everyone else on the internet isn't just boxes of text with no feelings that you can say whatever you want about. There are human beings on the other side of those words. Human beings who now think that you're a complete brainless asshole for drunkenly smashing out a garbled mess of hate-bait in the comments of an Owl City lyrics video.
Guys, we're born with brains. Brains are wonderful things. Sadly, an increasingly large number of us all around the world are failing to learn to use them beyond the mastery of getting hand to put cheetos where mouth hole is. Even less fortunate is the number of white-belts in cheeto-mastery that have also learned to whack their dusty orange fingers on keyboards to make internet words. And they have black belts in being complete imbeciles. And they're forming opinions.
Let me explain a little something about how opinions work with the brain. In order to develop an intelligent and informed opinion, one must first have a developed and at least somewhat intelligent brain. At the risk of using a potentially offensive metaphor, underused brains trying to make opinions is a lot like teenage pregnancy. Biological signals say that this is supposed to be a proper function, and everything kind of has an idea of what it should be doing, but chances are the result is just gonna come out with problems. Similarly, a mind that isn't yet prepared to be forming opinions can still attempt to do so, but they're going to come out with a lot of problems, and they likely won't function correctly.
Skipping over the obvious abortion joke I could be making about Mr. Saucedo's comment (and kind of just made anyway), you get my point. The vast majority of comments on the internet are the brain-vomit of minds that didn't fully digest what they were reading or viewing before regurgitating a response. Maybe they just didn't have the capacity to. But you know what? That's why I'm here.
Here is my fool proof* checklist of questions you should ask before you press the "Post Comment" button:
1: Does this really need to be said?
2. Have I spent at least ten minutes thinking about what I'm about to say?
3. Am I prepared to defend this opinion in a civil manner against an expert on this subject?
4. Am I an expert on this subject?
5. Would I say this to this person's face?
6. Would I say this to this person's face if he/she/they could definitely kick my ass?
7. Does my internet comment contain anything of a religious, political or controversial nature?
8. Does this comment accomplish anything outside of letting everyone know that I am angry?
9. Am I sober right now?
And finally,
10. Shouldn't I be doing something more constructive than starting fights with people I don't know on the internet?
If you answered in an unsatisfying fashion to any of those questions, congratulations! You shouldn't be posting a comment on the internet. Take your bag of throwing rocks and go home, because you don't belong here and nobody needs your trash. Sincerely, everyone with the capability to form thoughts outside of our own selfish agendas.
-The Sarcastic Soul-
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