-By Warner Todd Huston
I want everyone to know that I love the comments posters on political blogs. OK, truth be known I love the ones that agree with me. The others, not so much. But I really can see the logic to those that say comments are the worst part of the Internet Tubes. 99% of the time the comments section add nothing but vitriol and pointless blather…. not to mention a dearth of grammar and spelling. While there’s the occasional really detailed and good comment that does add to the thread, the good ones are far and few between.
Heck, there’ve been many months when I’ve just shut down the comments section on my own blog due to spamming. Only recently have I turned it back on.
But whatever the propriety of a blog comments section, the sad fact is they are all the same on nearly every political blog. It’s probably just a reflection of human nature, but these comments sections are all so eerily similar as to cause one to wonder if comments sections everywhere are all written by the same few post-happy people.
This may be the same on all blogs, but it is at least true on political clogs. You tell me. Go to a political blog comments section and I’ll bet you’ll find these commenters:
The I Luv U Man
No matter what is posted as the main post, this commenter loves it and thinks it was written by the smartest person in the world. This commenter is SURE that this post is the smartest thing a human has ever written, that is until the next post comes up and then THAT post is just as brilliant.
The Vulgarian
For this guy everything is turned into a curse filled rant or a sexual innuendo.
The Let’s Talk About the Important Issues Guy
This guy thinks that no one in the world knows more about “the real issues” than him and that everything everyone else is talking about “isn’t important.” He thinks he’s the only person in the world that knows anything about what we all should be talking about.
The Naysayer
It doesn’t matter what anyone says, this guy will state just the opposite. Even if he has to twist himself in a pretzel or is contradicting what he said in another thread, this guy insists you are wrong and that he is right. This guy is called a troll by nearly every other commenter but he is never deterred.
Mr. Did You Just Realize This?
This guy doesn’t understand the difference between reporting on a political incident, analyzing it, and drawing a conclusion, and never having “realized” it all before. This commenter is stupid enough not to have read the two thousand previous posts that raise similar questions and draw similar conclusions. But mostly this guy is just trying to impress everyone that he is worldly and smarter than everyone else. Truth is he is only impressing himself.
The NO DUH! Guy
Whatever news you have, whatever story you relate, THIS guy already knew it. Not only that but he insists that everyone knew it. Why this guy that seems to already know everything bothers to come to the website, however, is the real mystery? He is a close cousin to Mr. Did You Just Realize This.
The You Suckist
That’s right, you suck and this nitwit can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Multiple Registrar
He’s a troll. He registers about 25 times and has as many screen names. He’s been banned at least three times in the past. He’s a moron.
The Hey I Know This Guy’s Other Screen Name Guy
This guy is SURE that every new poster is really a new fake screen name of the guy that registers 25 times. He just KNOWS it, man. IT’S OBVIOUS, ya know?
The Visualist
See this commenter says that you are wrong because you are fat, or ugly, or bald. Even if you said that the sky is blue, you are fat so you must be wrong.
The Scholar
Let’s face it. No one is smarter than the Scholar. He knows everything in the world (thanks to Google) and you are just too stupid, simpleminded, or childish to understand what adults like him understand.
The Grammar Nazi
This guy is different than the scholar because he isn’t interested in facts. He’ll look over your main post and if there is one single grammatical error or a single misspelling he’ll claim that everything you have to say or ever did say in your entire life is now to be discounted. He’ll do the same thing to other commenters in the comments section. Certainly a main post or a comment that is rife with misspellings and lapses in grammar is worth derision, but the Grammar Nazi will treat a single misspelling as proof of utter mental inferiority no matter what else is going on. Like all Nazis, the Grammar Nazi has neither common sense, tolerance, nor humanity imbued in his empty soul. He knows how to spell “pedantic” but he sure doesn’t seem to understand its meaning!
(if the site has “like” features) The I’m Flagging This Guy
He hates you and he’s flagging your comment as inappropriate. Is your comment inappropriate? Probably not but let’s not let reality get in the way of The I’m Flagging You Guy.
Mr. Single Issue (Or Captain Conspiracy)
So you have a nice main post about your cute doggie, maybe a local ballot issue, or a recent bad flying experience, or even the loveliness of flowers. But THIS commenter just wants to hijack the thread and start talking about “the One-World Government,” or “UFOs,” or “the Republicans,” or “the Democrats,” or “the Jews,” or “the Illuminati,” or “the WTO,” or “the Bilderbergers,” or “pro-life,” or “pro-abortion,” or whatever one issue he ALWAYS tries to divert a thread to.
The Text Addled Fool
rites evrything in txtspeak and lols evrything and says u shud not b mean bout riting rite cuz it aint important anyway u kno? lol
The I’m Just Joking Guy
This guy WAS being mean in his comment, but he added a smiley to try and give himself some cover so that he could say, “I was just joking.” Face it. He was being mean.
The Can’t We All Get Alonger
He hates people with strong opinions because it’s mean, you know? He wants everyone to be happy and nice because life is too short to be wasting time like this…. and he wastes his time to tell us this, too.
The You Can’t Tell Someone to Shut Up so You Should Shut Up Guy
This guy thinks that you shouldn’t be allowed to complain about something that an actor, singer, or politician said because they have free speech and you should shut up because, you see, they have free speech. Does this nitwit have the slightest inkling that he has no idea what free speech even means? Does he even know what “inking” means? Of course not. But you should just shut up about it.
The Fatalist
That’s right. We are all wasting our time because nothing in life matters. Religion is a lie, politics is a sham, history is BS, man is doomed and screw it all anyway.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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