Thursday, May 15, 2008

Somebody Break Their Keyboards Part IV: The Quickening


Including my own irritable rant yesterday, there's been a lot of venom spewed on blogs and message boards all across the internet. But there's a new enemy of all that is decent and reasonable: the comments section.

Yes, whenever someone writes an online column or blog entry, there's usually a few people (unless it's MY blog for some reason) willing to add a comment or two. Sometimes , the comments are useful and intelligent (again, my blog). Most of the time, they're completely insane.

The worst offenders are ESPN and You Tube. I dare you find a single comment section on You Tube that does not include a F bomb, an ad hominem attack, or a misspelled word. ESPN is just as bad, except the spelling is marginally better. The comments on Spygate have been particularly insane, leading directly to my latest rant. Honestly, are there really that many stupid, illiterate, and hostile people in this country?

Yes, yes there are. And lest you think this is mostly an attack on people outside of New England (ie, the Pats haters I went off on yesterday), there are just as many tools in the Northeast. Check out the comment section on the Boston Herald. In any political discussion, you'll find a bunch of people who best exemplify the lowest common denominator that infests WEEI and WRKO: nitwits who think they're Howie Carr. I already went off on Howie for his repetitive column. I could have just as easily gone off on him for producing a seemingly endless array of whiny, racist, homophobic, misogynistic paltroons who infest the Boston Herald website and make the comment section unintentionally hysterical. I don't know if they're mocking Howie or agreeing with him, but they come across as morons.

Sadly, I can also say the same thing about my favorite sports site on the internet: the Boston Sports Media Watch. I enjoy the columns and blog entries on this site immensely because they share my view of WEEI, the Globe, Herald, and NESN. What I do find distressing is the amount of idiocy that makes it's way on that website anyways. It's particularly sad to see any article about a female reporter degenerate into a discussion about T & A, which is exactly the type of frat boy nonsense the website seems to be against.

The comments section in any website are basically anonymous, giving someone the opportunity to spew whatever idiocy they feel like. I don't think it adds much to any discussion, and thus I would like to clone Charlie Chaplin about 10 million times and have him destroy the computers of anyone who choses to use a comment section as a way of displaying what kind of a pathetic human being they really are.