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Feminist blogger wants you to STFU
[TheGuardoan] It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m not fond of comments sections. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find many female writers who are. On most sites – from YouTube to local newspapers – comments are a place where the most noxious thoughts rise to the top and smart conversations are lost in a sea of garbage.
That can apply to writers as well. Not everything that emanates from a writer's pen is pure gold. In fact, most of it is pure garbage. But it is free speech which will be protected by more speech, whether Jessica wants it or not.
There’s a reason, after all, that the refrain “don’t read the comments” has become ubiquitous among journalists. But if we’re not to read them, why have them at all?
Some freelancers read and respond to comments much of the time. Comments even may be helpful in some cases. For instance, the Daily Mail posted a foto last night of a Russian T90 tank, labeled as such, except that it wasn't a T-90. It was a 152mm self propelled artillery piece. (It was a 2S19.) I helpfully pointed out the error.
I wasn’t always a comments-hater. When I started a feminist blog in 2004, I was thrilled to finally be able to talk with other young feminists online and was open to chatting with detractors. I saw the comments section as a way to destabilize the traditional writer/reader relationship – no longer did audiences need to consume an article without a true opportunity to respond. Comments even made my writing better those days; feedback from readers broadened the way I thought and sometimes changed my mind.

But as the internet and audiences grew, so did the bile. Now if feels as if comments uphold power structures instead of subverting them: sexism, racism and homophobia are the norm; threats and harassment are common. (That’s not even counting social media.)
Sux to be on the internet where even the lowest of the low will tell you what they think, don't it? That's not the bad part. The bad part is when you whine like an 11 year spoiled brat that a few people don't appreciate your bile.
For writers, wading into comments doesn’t make a lot of sense – it’s like working a second shift where you willingly subject yourself to attacks from people you have never met and hopefully never will. Especially if you are a woman. As Laurie Penny has written, “An opinion, it seems, is the short skirt of the internet. Having one and flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male keyboard-bashers to tell you how they’d like to rape, kill and urinate on you.” The problem is so bad that online harassment is a keynote subject this year at the Online News Association conference.
Gawd forbid you do additional work in a flooded market like journalism. Gawd forbid you are forced to make corrections when some lowlife points out a grammatical,factual or conceptual error in your personal pontifications. And I can't speak to "threats" online to rape or kill. They aren't specifically illegal since they are free speech (freedom is a pesky thing, huh), so how you handle it is every bit as important as the existence of those "threats".
My own exhaustion with comments these days has less to do with explicit harassment – which, at places like the Guardian, is swiftly taken care of. (Thank you, moderators!) Rather, it’s the never-ending stream of derision that women, people of color and other marginalized communities endure; the constant insistence that you or what you write is stupid or that your platform is undeserved. Yes, I’m sure straight, white, male writers get this kind of response too – but it’s not nearly as often and not nearly as nasty.
Puleez. Get over yourself.
I don’t much understand the appeal of comments for readers either. Outside of the few places that have rich and intelligent conversation in comments, what is the point of engaging in debate where the best you can hope for are a few pats on the back from strangers for that pithy one-liner? Isn’t that what Facebook or Twitter is for?
It's called putting a human face on the Gawdlike persona you would rather exude than the vulnerable writer you actually are. Debates may devolve into love or hate fests, but they have their uses, believe it or not. And Facebook and Twitter are just other outlets.
Seriously: when tech news website Re/code shut down its comments section last year, editors cited the growth of social media as one reason for the decision: “The bulk of discussion of our stories is increasingly taking place there, making onsite comments less and less used and less and less useful.”

Comments sections also give the impression that all thoughts are created equal when, well, they’re not. When Popular Science stopped publishing comments, for example, it was because “everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again...scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to ‘debate’”. When will we see the humanity and dignity of women as a fact, rather than an opinion?
Because "the humanity and dignity of women" is subject to debate, just as for men? As for scientific certainty, when nothing gets discussed about the implications of scientific conclusions on an individual, that will always be a bad thing. Rather than shut off all discussions abut the faux issue of climate change and imposing solutions with do little about it, open debate makes it easier to frame the issues for everyone, so that decisions can be made.
It’s true, I could just stop reading comments. But I shouldn’t have to. Ignoring hateful things doesn’t make them go away, and telling women to simply avoid comments is just another way of saying we’re too lazy or overwhelmed to fix the real problem.
No shame in admitting you're overwhelmed. No shame in admitting you can't handle whatever attention comes your way with your views. If you can't handle the Big Megaphone, maybe its time to try a smaller one.
Websites and news sources are increasingly moving forward without comments because they find them unnecessary and counterproductive. In my perfect world, more places would follow their lead – at least until publishers find lasting solutions to making comments worth it. Worth it for readers and for writers. Because the nastiness on our doorstep has piled too high for too long, and I just want to get out of the house.
Posted by: badanov 2015-09-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=429563