Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Media / Silverman New York Times Columnist Disses You, the Online Commenter
Posted by Jack Silverman on Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:58 PM
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In her digital culture column "The Medium" in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Virginia Heffernan laments the dearth of nuanced discourse in online reader comments. Citing reader reaction to Washington Post political columnist Anne Applebaum as her starting point, Heffernan lambastes pretty much the whole online commenting universe:
Commenters, in short, rarely really sock it to a columnist. They also too often go automatic, churning out 100-word synopses of one stock ideological position after another. But most disappointing of all, for readers, is that commenters don't, as literary critics say, read an article against itself to show how, for example, an argument framed as incendiary is in fact banal, or one that's meant to be feminist is retrogressive, or one that touts its originality is a knockoff.Interestingly, Heffernan never really touches on the Internet's anonymity factor, which seems to seduce otherwise normal folks into spewing venomous rants with no accountability. The phenomenon was summed up rather succinctly several years ago by web comic strip Penny Arcade in a piece titled "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory":
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Heffernan does offer suggestions to improve reader comments, such as "creating registration standards, inventive means of moderating and displaying comments, membership benefits for regular posters and ratings systems," and holds up Slate as a prime example. Still, even these steps don't guarantee insightful discourse, as Slate reader Joshua911 demonstrated in a comment regarding an Applebaum story about a renovation at Monticello: "Awful place. Awful change. Awful analysis. Awful writer. Awful country. Awful."
Fortunately for us here at Pith, our readers would never engage in such dogmatic, reactionary or ignoble behavior, would they now?
Comments (1)
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You want to see good commenting? I've said it before and I'll say it again, the BBC's "Have Your Say" is the best place on the internet. Okay, second best. The first most best is "Speak You're Branes," the delicious blog that offers commentary on the comments found on "Have Your Say."
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Posted by
Ashley
on 04/29/2009 at 3:19 PM
