A Difference About Opinions

Over the last couple of years I have learned a very important lesson when it comes to the internet - when I really enjoyed an article or story I have just read I make sure not to accidentally scroll too far down past the byline because that will only lead me to the comment section and frankly, no good can come from reading those. It doesn't matter how innocent a subject matter is, there is always one curmudgeon out there who will hate it. Not that the comments after an article are always related to the subject of that article. If you have ever been online you know the comment section of websites are typically filled with poorly-spelled, grammatically-challenged ignorant and often racist thoughts which have nothing to do with anything as well as political rants which have even less to do with the subject. The few people who actually manage to produce an insightful comment on the story usually undo all their good work by then firing back at anyone who may disagree with their point of view idiots. Seriously, it is enough to make you lose hope in humanity. The biggest reason for all this hate is most likely because these people can hide behind anonymity since a lot of sites allow you to create an alias. To combat this, recently a few sites have started to try and curb these type of insults by demanding people comment through their Facebook pages, thus eliminating some of the bravado which comes from thinking there are no consequences to your actions. However it didn't get rid of them all, so I wasn't really surprised the other day when I read that someone decided to simply do away with internet comments altogether.

The only thing that I did find curious was that the site which finally decided to take this nuclear option was Popular Science. I never would have thought a fairly straightforward website like Popular Science would have attracted the kind of people who felt the need to insult people just to get their point across, but perhaps that fact they were the first people to snap should prove just how out of control these internet trolls have gotten. If the rational scientists are fed up, what hope do the rest of us have? Now, it is not like they are turning and running - Popular Science will still provide the author's contact information if you feel compelled to get in touch and debate something in the article. The catch is you have to email them through your own email address. Not only will providing personal contact information slow a lot of these people down I assume Popular Science is also going off the principle that most people can't stay angry for too long. The biggest problem with internet comments (other than the mindset of people writing them) is that they are far too convenient. The box to input your ravings just sits at the bottom of every article and all you need to do is enter a small code to prove you aren't a robot determined to send out spam before you can say whatever is on your mind at that moment. A little time-lapse is probably in everyone's best interests. We all know how easy it is to get sidetracked on the internet, so many of these angry emails will never get written once the commentator clicks on two or three other links and suddenly its an hour later and the urge to write in to disagree with someone has gone away.

Of course, the free speech advocate in me has some concerns about silencing people's opinions on topics because people have the right to show the world just how stupid they are. After all, the First Amendment was intended to protect the speech we hate, not just the stuff we agree with. But beyond the political aspect there is also the sense the site is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even though you have to go hunting for them, occasionally there are some valid, well-composed thoughts and counter-arguments mixed in among the crap and spam. Not allowing those comments to see the light of day is almost as bad as making people weed through the terrible ones with no reward for their troubles. Plus, this system allows the authors to pick and choose which comments they want to read and I am going to assume they are only going to read the good ones. This is bad because if there is one thing I know about writers it's that we love it when people tell us how great something we wrote is. It is a recipe for some severely inflated egos and unchecked opinions, neither which makes for particularly great reporting. A little push back or negative reinforcement can occasionally be good for the soul. But, then I sat back and really thought about how many of those great comments from random people on the internet existed and decided the number was low enough that I could live with losing them, so my feelings of going to the barricades over this issue went away.

Still, I guess I am just sad that it came to this. I mean, when did people forget how to debate without immediately sinking to insults? I was reading a story the other day about something in the world of sports and stupidly started reading the comments. One guy provided a very compelling counter-argument to the original author but the next person who replied started their thoughts on the matter with, "Your (sic) dumb." Making it even crazier was that following that inauspicious start the second person's comment was filled with some well-thought out rebuttals to the first guy, yet for some reason that guy felt compelled to start out by insulting the first reader. It's like starting his comment with an insult was a tic and it made me totally dismiss all of his points, no matter how valid they may have been. I'm not going to miss seeing comments like this as I make my way around the internet, I'm just going to be curious to see if this method catches on. As I said before, it is not like Popular Science often publishes articles which gets people's blood boiling, so the world most likely won't miss their comment section but if this system allows people to still get their points across using some other method it may provide a model for what other, more heavily-trafficked sites could use going forward. It probably won't do much to correct all the horrible spelling out there, but at this point any little move in the right direction should be seen as progress.