[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.
#5
In other words she doesn't like comments because not everyone agrees her spew isn't the finest wine ever... And that is just being hateful and racist and sexist and...
#6
Personal opinions are freedom. Common stuff and often a Luxury( if you have it at all ). Humanity as it actually IS.
Reason and tolerance is NOT coin of the realm in most human communication. Decency is actually probably against Human Nature.
If they CAN shut you up, then ( trust me ) they WILL. Human nature is a fist most of the time. You learn to be polite to people who can and will hurt you. Just the way it is.
See you in Church, sweety.
Men invented Wars and women invented throw rugs and comfy chairs. Women have a good card with sex. Men can be persuaded. Politics is the art of compromise.
You tend to believe what you have to believe and you save up for a gun. Am I lyin' to 'ya?
#8
Golly. Hemingway is trying out a different line, as well as his daily anonym change to get ahead of the moderators. But really, men invented war, women throw rugs and comfy chairs? Clearly Hemingway's experience is limited in both directions.
#9
When will we see the humanity and dignity of women as a fact, rather than an opinion?
Never. Those are by definition opinions. Human (government) laws and human (dignity, respect) valuations are always opinions.
Running an op-ed and running around telling people to get in suit or shut up is a prime recipe for getting all sorts of feedback. It is so predictable, it is almost like the purpose of it all....either than, or your co-workers do not like you and troll your site as well.
"I'm here to tell you my opinion and my job are just as equal if not more so than any man, but I can't handle the icky parts of my job and have to have somebody take the trash out for me or I get nauseous."
#10
the US is the only country in the world with a first amendment protection of free speech and freedom of the press
australia does not have it, i wish it did. In australia, threatening hate speech on line is prosecuted by law
so is defamation
if you publish something nasty about someone -even if true- they will take your house from you and all your money
in victoria there is not even the freedom of speech to criticise religion
so you cannot criticise islam as that might be *vilification of religion* which is prosecutable under law
NSW Police issued a press release in the wake of the martin place Islamofascist attack stating they would prosecute the *crime of bias* if anybody were harassed for their religious views (ie if a hijabi were challenged on her advertising her beliefs, she could complain that she felt insulted and the police would get you)
this NSW Police media release was then posted on Islamophobia Register Online, run on facebook by miriam veiszadeh, an apologist for sharia and Islamofascism, possibly aligned to the muslim brotherhood
her facebook page runs propaganda to promote muslims as victims of a giant Islamophobia backlash where their very lives are threatened daily by white racist islamophobes
therefore building a case for special legal protections and blasphemy laws
she is seeking to redefine Islam as a *race* so it can get further legal protections from tough anti-discrimination laws that stop discrimination on the grounds of the colour of your skin.
#11
Yet I find the comments on Rantburg the most interesting part. Except maybe for the headlines.
But I do see what the writer means - I read some of the comments the other day at the article about Pacifica radio tanking. Some twit was hogging all the comments with their view how unfair it was, another of the many vast conspiracies. I believe the spewer used a female nym. Another feminazi who wants us all to pay for her radio station with less than a thousand listeners. Clearly a conspiracy!
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/15/2015 13:28 Comments ||
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#12
The article make me appreciate the 'burg even more. Everything she says is mostly disproved by this place.
[IsraelTimes] Why Cairo appears to be taking the Islamist threat from the peninsula more seriously than before
It's now a routine. On each of the past four days, the front man of the Egyptian army, Mohammed Samir, has offered glowing reports of the military's achievements in its latest operation in northeast Sinai, which began in the middle of last week.
On Thursday, Samir claimed Egyptian soldiers had succeeded in killing more than 80 terror operatives and arresting almost 200. He reported on the number of vehicles destroyed, and the cycle of violences, tunnels and warehouses used by the bully boyz (most of them members of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis
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#1
As per REDDIT, EGYPT repor wants to build a Moat/Canal to keep separate from Hamas + repevent the construction of underground tunnels by the Paleos.
Also, FYI the KSA is proceeding wid a proposed Salman Canal project in order to allow uninterrupted Oil-Gas ship traffic to bypass the seemingly Iran-controlled Strait of Hormuz.
[PJMedia] There's no telling just how ugly things will get in Europe before this "immigration" crisis is over. It's safe to say though that the ugliness is just getting started. How bad could it get? So bad that the refugees might flee back to the Middle East. Let's revisit a VodkaPundit column from January, 2005, republished here unedited and in its entirety.
#3
Thanks, g(r)omgoru. I shared with a German Facebook friend who is very upset at what is happening to her country... and at the pressure to pretend it is not.
#5
really interesting thanks for that. i have been thinking the same thing lately. That if civilised people do not find a way to stop this *peaceful* invasion now
then the problem will just escalate until savage people solve it - and we wont like that.
we really have a duty, each and every one of us to fight the islamofascists in our own countries. Fight every way we can - peacefully, though the law and campaigning and talking to people
and ringing newspapers and radio stations to complain when their stories are biased or they use inaccurate language
and lobby politicians
this is why we have to reject the sharia-lovers, and give only temporary protection visas to migrants who call themselves refugees - with a time stamp on it so they are sent back
nobody wants to see the horrors of the totalitarian state and of auschwitz revive, but if things start to fall apart that is what I fear will happen
[DAWN] THE ego-fuelled haste with which the Nandipur power project was hustled along towards completion has now yielded up its fruit.
The power plant remains idle despite massive cost overruns, and the government, which once touted the project as an emblem of its can-do credentials, is now calling for an audit of the scheme.
What makes the whole affair even more troubling is that it comes in the middle of a large spurt in power projects, many of them connected with the China Pakistain Economic Corridor, and which the government is similarly trying hard to own as emblems of its success.
The Nandipur fiasco has rightly cast a shadow over those as well, since any government that can botch up this project can make a mess of the others too.
One large CPEC project in Gadani has already been wound up because it ran the risk of becoming another example of failure, but on a far bigger scale. Given this context, it is imperative that the Nandipur fiasco be examined very closely and the right lessons be drawn from it.
An audit of the project's finances is certainly in order, but perhaps an investigation into the massive cost overruns, including an $80m remobilisation advance for the contractor and a $30m tab for conversion to a different fuel, should also be carried out.
But it is also important to add that thus far there is little to no evidence of corruption or any other irregularity that would merit the use of the word 'scam'.
The project has suffered from a wide range of governmental failures -- incompetence, poor planning, haste, lack of coordination -- but whether or not there has been any criminal irregularity has not yet been determined.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/15/2015 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
The project has suffered from a wide range of governmental failures -- incompetence, poor planning, haste, lack of coordination -- but whether or not there has been any criminal irregularity has not yet been determined.
I can never tell the difference between incompetence and deliberate evil; they look the same from the outside. What is clear is that the suckee's made money off of the suckers.
#4
Insanity? Our Prez said we should import a bunch of refugee/migrants. Is it insane because they are Christians? Is it insane to do a bit of vetting, possibly by people who might recognize some of the mooks on sight?
Not any crazier than the EU talk about air strikes on the smuggler's boats. Unless you mean waiting until they are full of migrants, which I kinda hate to say because it probably would work.
[RealClearDefence] Major General Robert Scales, former commandant of the US Army War College, recently lamented his role in returning the novel Once an Eagle to prominence in the military.
“The book’s lasting attraction for soldiers is the personal and moral battle within its pages between true and false officership as embodied by Sam Damon, a former enlisted man and true soldier’s soldier and Courtney Massengale, a West Pointer who embodies all that is evil among the grasping and politically driven elite… For years the book became a bedside volume and often I would, like many in my generation who had seen insensitive staff REMFs in Vietnam, warn too-clever officers not to ‘act like a Massengale’… With reflection I think, in part as a result of the book, the Army today venerates Sam Damon too much and castigates Courtney Massengale to its detriment. Its pages might well have contributed to the conflation of two views of careerism between the good warrior versus the bad staff officer.”
Scales’ main point — staff officers might be service-oriented as easily as self-oriented, just as line officers might be self-oriented as easily as service-oriented — raises a larger point. We often confuse affiliation or complexion — one’s job or one’s personality — with the weightier matters of character and service.
One classic formulation of this confusion is ‘Manager vs. Leader.’ In any of a hundred stories, I recall friends describing some individual in a position of formal authority ‘a manager, not a leader,’ because of their tendency to treat their people like objects to be manipulated and controlled rather than comrades to be inspired and cared for. While I wholeheartedly ratify the substance of their critique, I would argue that the core issue — treating people as means rather than ends — is fundamentally a failure of character rather than style.
What I mean by this is I have seen a good number of excellent leaders whose command style was very quiet and technical, but genuinely loved their people, gave them the room and resources to flourish, and led their units very effectively. They generally got less credit than they should have, because their ability to build excellent organizational architectures and place the right people in the right places meant that their people, not themselves, took center stage.
Conversely, I have seen some number of people who were quite personable, generally well-liked, and often seen ‘out in front,’ but were at their core profoundly selfish and lazy. These individuals may have been seen as leaders for a time, but their troops would generally realize at some point that their leader was more interested in personal angles rather than their well-being. This generally occurred when a failure to do homework or due diligence in planning created some sort of catastrophe. The suave authority figure then either sweet-talked or blame-shifted their way out of the frag pattern, which fell on their subordinates. The worst of these were the Pied Pipers, who left time-bombs for their successors by spending down organizational capital to secure their own prosperity, and visited harm on their subordinates through neglect, yet were so well-liked that neither successor nor follower figured out that they had been done a disservice until years later. More at the link
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
