Jill Murray
You know how on a lot of blogs, you need to login or give your email address or translate a little graphic-anti-spam thingy before you’re allowed to leave a comment?
I think someone should make an application that makes you jump through some hoops before you’re allowed to read comments. The application should ask you a number of probing psychological questions, which it would then store on file. Then it should run a kind of text-screening process to ferret out potential negativity triggers. Then it should ask you a series of additional questions to determine your present mood, and finally ask you to sign a waiver before proceeding to the comments if it judges that you just can’t handle these comments today.
I just get that distracted and disturbed by comments sometimes. There a couple of reliably friendly sites where I always read the comments. Then there are a couple of reliably unfriendly sites where I never read the comments. Then there is every other site in the universe (which must be up to what? 20 or 30 internet web sites by now?). It’s too much for me to handle. I need my own watchdog organization to keep an eye on me out there.
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So true. I had to advise a friend of mine to never read the comments on YouTube (she was sorta new to the internet – I know that sounds weird) and explain what a troll was. She was horrified by some of the stuff she read when she went to see Feist’s appearence on Sesame Street. It’s very sad. The Onion AV Club posters can be very funny, though even there I scroll down and only stop at the comments by the writers (flagged by a handy “AV Club” logo).
I sometimes think about canceling my subscription to the Globe and Mail. But then I read the “Globe online” and I can’t help looking at the comments. Then I am infuriated (sometimes amused). The paper Paper, at least, only has the editorial page.
Agreed. G&M online was one of the primary culprits of which I was thinking when I posted this. It markets itself like a paper smart enough that you OUGHT to be able to read the comments, but then online, you might as well be reading the TO Sun for all the difference it makes. Is *that* what they mean by “gotcha journalism?”
It does market itself a bit more smarty-pants than it is. It also markets itself as if it really has a diverse set of columnists; but you know my opinion on Leah McLaren, Wente and Blatchford in particular. But Stephanie Nolan sort of makes up for them…