In this wild "new media" world, it's important for all of us—respectable newspapers and parasitic oxpeckers alike—to share freely, in a spirit of holiday cheer. So we were happy to see this morning that the New York Times has decided to borrow our commenting system. It's really the least we can do for you guys!
In an effort to make users do as little as humanly possible to blast their thoughts, Facebook has removed a crucial aspect of the commenting process: the part where you actually have to press "Comment." Now you've only got to hit the enter key, and voila! You've said, "Happy birthday, dude" to a kid you sat next to in a middle school pre-algebra class without wasting a click.
Like you, I'm over this whole commenting, what it says about you, what it says about me and our Internet society at large thing. But there's a Wall Street Journal article on the subject, and it's my beat. Atlantic writer Andrew Sullivan, whose website does not have commenting, recently ran a poll about allowing them. The results will shock you. (How's that for an incentive to click the jump?)
Yesterday, I very earnestly asked who you commenters are and what you get out of the whole commenting experience. Except for a few people who fairly criticized me for just trying to drum up comments, almost everyone responded with equal earnestness. For the most part, people seem to just enjoy the community in the comments. For some, it's a distraction from work, when YouTube is blocked. For others, it's a distraction from the people at work, where everyone is old and no one gets Breakfast Club references. Prolific commenters claim to get laid through Gawker. I find that both depressing and inspiring, since actually writing for the site hasn't done the same for me, though I wouldn't want it to, either. Jenniferhdaniel said that if I write an essay commenting on the commenters, I would be the lamest of the lame-os. Harsh. Well, how lame would I be if I wrote about the comment reading experience?
This post is about comments. Consider that your invitation to tell me I have it all wrong. To be honest, I don't know that much about the commenting scene. I'm not above making anonymous judgments or being bored at work, I just never understand the motivation of blog commenters. Is it winning a commie? Being quoted in the New York Times public editor's column? I get that being anonymous makes people more free to revert to their Lord of The Flies side, but why is everyone always so rude? And is that rudeness destroying society?
