The Poisonous Comment Snake

I just read this phat piece by Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian and found myself nodding a “Hell yeah” in agreement. Freedland really nailed the problem with comment sections on blogs, news articles and nearly everywhere else online, and I’m in full agreement that a set of orderly online debate rules would be nice.

I can’t remember the last time I read a full comments thread on a large-scale news blog or media website, as the instant I see “144 comments” at the end of a piece, I know I’m going to wander headlong into a vitriolic swamp that I’d rather avoid. The people who “win” these kind of debates are usually those most willing to spend hours at work hitting F5 and typing out “Go crawl back in your liberal/Zionist/fascist/terrorist/Fox News hole and die a slow death.” Every publication at which I’ve worked gets loads of this in e-mail format each day as well, often fired off with no name. Yet nearly 100% of the time that I’ve responded to these irate people in a polite fashion, I get an apologetic e-mail back. So yes, commenter: you did know it was wrong to address somebody in the illest way, and when you were called on it, you knew better.

While you can’t force people to use a real name when commenting, I’m of the belief that those who spew awful venom without using their real name should be shunned by other commenters. It shouldn’t be an official policy of websites to block people from using anonymous handles, because as Freedland points out, sometimes this really does allow for real-life freedom that wouldn’t occur otherwise. (And I mean the good, democratic kind, the type they don’t have in Egypt or China.) But if you’re a Westerner living in a free society, you need to accept the fact that actions have consequences, and that freedom of speech isn’t freedom from irate reaction. Our democracy runs on both freedom AND order.

If you want to throw bombs at other people that don’t address the subject of their arguments, man up and use your real name.

Say word.