Monday, March 23, 2009

Comments on websites

Almost every major website now has a comments section where you can make comments on the article or post that you just read. It's really getting on my nerves. Why? Because all it does is highlight how immature and stupid we are as a society. It's all drivel. That's what discussion boards are full, I don't need a discussion board for every ESPN article. And I'm not saying that everyone is stupid, there are a ton of smart people out there. Plenty of smart people are reading these articles (I am afterall ;)), but they aren't the ones commenting. I think in the hundreds of comments I've read over the years, maybe one or two have added to the conversation positively. Most of the time its just people pointing out to the whole Internet how stupid they are, trying to cause an argument or putting down the author. Mostly, it's just idiocracy. If you read comments on CNN, you know exactly why the economy is bad. No one commenting on CNN has any idea about what they've just read. None of the people commenting on the article are intelligent enough to read, comprehend and come up with their own opinions about the article. And none of the commenters have the educational background to know what parts of the article are media fluff and scare tactics. So, I know that the big sites can't moderate every comment, there are just too many comments coming in to filter it. My suggestion is to just cut it out. We don't need it. Some of you are thinking, if the comments bother Phil so much, why doesn't he just stop reading them? Well, he can't. It's like a train wreck. It's like I read an article and I just have to browse over a couple to see what people are saying about it. And it always surprises me how incomprehensible they become with each passing day. So anyway, that's what I hate about the Internet lately, comments on web articles. Vent complete.