Lately, I've been looking at comments on stories in the deseretnews.com website. It is perhaps, the funniest, most bizarre thing I have encountered. Talk about polarizing opinions and values? No seriously, I am going to talk about them. I am kind of irritated by these knee-jerk responses which have no substance. I noticed the same thing going on at youtube.com. Only peoples arguments were more ridiculously. My favorite is a video about a lego bubble gum sorter which somehow lends itself to a rant about racism by the ever friendly user with the name, GAYNIGGERandAIDS. Oh, how that does my heart good!!
(link included: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiJdn6bg3fs)
My guess is that people have lost the ever popular censor gene. Anonymity does that doesn't it. Not having to combine your face with obscene comments is like ripping out the organs of a Victorian prostitute and not facing the criminal ramifications. Yes, I am making a comparison of Jack the Ripper and user driven comment boards. I guess my point is that back in the day humans interacted with other humans face to face, and there was no middleman in the form of powered silicon. When this archiac ritual was being practiced most people, for some reason chose to honor and respect others opinions. They may not have agreed with this humans beliefs but they were allowed to express them without being demoralized and vilified. Excepting, any political event or the McLaughlin Group on PBS.
Now folks, some of you will be surprised to hear that I (ONE time!!), reacted this way. I had read a report by a Denver journalist during the Olympics. This man has a reputation of inciting reaction through his articles (I.E. he is bad writer that knows how to provoke). Which apparently isn't too hard if thousands can be so offensive on youtube, I'm beginning to believe being times 2006 person of the year wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Watch out Mr. Putin, people will suddenly think your practices are undemocratic and accuse your leadership of poisoning defected governmental workers with radiation. We can only pray his reputation will go untainted. Oh no, was that last comment the type of reaction I was talking about on these user based websites. Perhaps I am guilty also, yes I am, didn't I just begin this paragraph inditing me of this problem. Maybe I better make good on my introductory sentence, this reporter talked about various aspects of Mormon culture but, what rattled me was his discussion on Mormon undergarments. So I wrote him, what I thought was a strongly worded letter, the biggest accusation I made was that his piece was not about sports but was in fact an editorial. Score for me, right? The following day he replied with a simple letter that stated he did in fact write editorial articles once a week. The piece I responded happened to be his weekly opinion driven article. Opps, was my face red!! So what does this last paragraph mean, not so sure but, I'll go ahead and conclude.
Perhaps there is a reason that for hundreds if not thousands of years people were not given a forum to respond to things in written anonymous settings, most of us are incapable on non-biase exploration. Why do people make these comments because there is a middleman and there identity is protected. They are truly anonymous and don't have to answer to there stupid insensitive rants. I believe that anonymity brings out barbarism in peoples personality
(ex: http://www.deseretnews.com/user/comments/1,5150,695242525,00.html). Kind of like this blog. Wait, did I just undermine the existence of the jdgle blog. Oh well, ignorance is bliss. I await your knee-jerking in the form of incomprehensible jabber about my, well incomprehensible jabber.
Jeff
(link included: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiJdn6bg3fs)
My guess is that people have lost the ever popular censor gene. Anonymity does that doesn't it. Not having to combine your face with obscene comments is like ripping out the organs of a Victorian prostitute and not facing the criminal ramifications. Yes, I am making a comparison of Jack the Ripper and user driven comment boards. I guess my point is that back in the day humans interacted with other humans face to face, and there was no middleman in the form of powered silicon. When this archiac ritual was being practiced most people, for some reason chose to honor and respect others opinions. They may not have agreed with this humans beliefs but they were allowed to express them without being demoralized and vilified. Excepting, any political event or the McLaughlin Group on PBS.
Now folks, some of you will be surprised to hear that I (ONE time!!), reacted this way. I had read a report by a Denver journalist during the Olympics. This man has a reputation of inciting reaction through his articles (I.E. he is bad writer that knows how to provoke). Which apparently isn't too hard if thousands can be so offensive on youtube, I'm beginning to believe being times 2006 person of the year wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Watch out Mr. Putin, people will suddenly think your practices are undemocratic and accuse your leadership of poisoning defected governmental workers with radiation. We can only pray his reputation will go untainted. Oh no, was that last comment the type of reaction I was talking about on these user based websites. Perhaps I am guilty also, yes I am, didn't I just begin this paragraph inditing me of this problem. Maybe I better make good on my introductory sentence, this reporter talked about various aspects of Mormon culture but, what rattled me was his discussion on Mormon undergarments. So I wrote him, what I thought was a strongly worded letter, the biggest accusation I made was that his piece was not about sports but was in fact an editorial. Score for me, right? The following day he replied with a simple letter that stated he did in fact write editorial articles once a week. The piece I responded happened to be his weekly opinion driven article. Opps, was my face red!! So what does this last paragraph mean, not so sure but, I'll go ahead and conclude.
Perhaps there is a reason that for hundreds if not thousands of years people were not given a forum to respond to things in written anonymous settings, most of us are incapable on non-biase exploration. Why do people make these comments because there is a middleman and there identity is protected. They are truly anonymous and don't have to answer to there stupid insensitive rants. I believe that anonymity brings out barbarism in peoples personality
(ex: http://www.deseretnews.com/user/comments/1,5150,695242525,00.html). Kind of like this blog. Wait, did I just undermine the existence of the jdgle blog. Oh well, ignorance is bliss. I await your knee-jerking in the form of incomprehensible jabber about my, well incomprehensible jabber.
Jeff
