The Comments Section

Wait a minute...this is a great post. Hit all the things I like. Shout out, 'That's what she said joke', real issue, good humor, disclaimer. But, this isn't in anyway directed at me for sending you all those great 'the best of Patrick Stewart' clips is it? "

- R.Sneep          

This is a solid comment.  One easily deserving of a response.  And, as much as the man who posted it tried his best to hint that I should indeed do just that, I held back.  Why, you ask?  Well, because I realized right away that this one deserved a whole blog, and not just a quick one-liner.  You see, despite R. Sneep's best intentions, this comment segued perfectly into the next random musing on my list:

Comments and the jerks that post them.

First of all, let me be clear, I know what the intention and tone of this comment was meant to be.  He wasn't trying to be insulting, and the little bit in which he was, was purely for comedic effect.  In fact, most of what he said was lavishing me with praise, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.  On top of it all, the Patrick Stewart bit was solid.  So pretty good comment, right?  Well, for the most part, yes.  But, you can see how a lesser, more insecure man might have misread it, right?  The shear surprise that someone felt at actually having read a good blog post for once. "Wait a minute… this isn't crap... it's not even terrible… this is the last thing that I've come to expect when I sit down to read Travis' blog."

I took it in the spirit in which it was intended, because I appreciate it and because I know Randy goes out of his way to leave comments on this blog.  He knows how much I like it when people leave comments, so he does just that.  But the truth is, I don't just like getting comments, I love getting them.  There, I said it.  I know I should be playing it cool.  Like, whatever... if people want to comment, I'm not going to stop them.  But, there's no point in hiding it: I love 'em.  And I don't care who knows.

That's why I have to tread lightly here.  Because I don't want to scare anyone away from ever commenting on my blog.  But at the same time, I see so much crap on YouTube and Twitter, that I still have to call these jerks out.

When I first started out doing this, comments were the end-all-be-all for me.  The gauge of how well I was doing.  The litmus test.  If a blog post got two comments, and another post got none, that was like having scientific proof that the post with more was of a better quality that the post with less, regardless of whether I agreed or not.  If a string of posts that I was doing - whether it be Man Crushes, Dunk Contests or Schwarzenegger Films - didn't get a comment after a few posts in a row, I started to wonder if that topic wasn't interesting to people, and if I should just abandon the list mid-stream and move on to something that seemed to resonate more.  I mean, if I was posting a twenty five part list, one entry at a time, once a week, and no one was digging it five posts in, should I really be doing another twenty and losing what little readership I already had over the course of those next few months?  Luckily, right as I was feeling this, without fail, a post would get a few comments, and my insecurities were put to rest.

That said, for all the stock I used to put into the comments section, over time I've come to realize that it doesn't really mean anything at all.  I'm not a great writer, but some of the posts I've been most proud of and would consider 'good writing' have resulted in nary a comment, whereas posts that I typed up in a hurry and put little-to-no thought or effort into have spawned a back-and-forth of 3 or 4 comments.  So, obviously it's less a matter of the quality of a post, but rather the way a person reacts to the subject matter in question.  I can wax poetic all I want about Tegan and Sara, but at the end of the day, nothing I write is going to leave Randy just itching to get his two cents in.  But if I put Predator anywhere but first on my list of Arnold movies, no matter how shabbily I do the write up, Randy is going to have to comment.

That's just the way it is.  And, after reading a few other blogs, I came to realize something:  Everyone that writes a blog wishes that everyone that read it would leave a comment on every post.  And, much like me, not too many people are above begging for it.  I am definitely not alone in my shameless pleas for comments, but I am also not alone in having those pleas fall on deaf ears.  Which is fine.  I don't go around commenting on very many things either.  Me complaining about a lack thereof on my own blog is akin to the pot making racist remarks about the kettle.  Or something like that.  I may have been sick that day in school where they explained the meaning behind that expression.

The point being, I sort of came to accept that I was never going to get a whole lot of comments, and toned down the not-so-subtle pleas for them within the body of my posts.  Don't get me wrong, I still await them with bated breath each week (so definitely keep 'em coming, those that do),  it's just that I no longer cater to it as much as I once did.  For example, I passed on doing another contest to celebrate the blog's anniversary this year.  That whole thing had sort of been a thinly-veiled attempt to see just how many people were actually giving the blog a look-see.  So, aside from never having seen Randy actually wear his prize, and thus losing the motivation to put that same work into it again this year, the truth is that I just don't need that sort of validation any more.  Well, that, and I have a small fear that perhaps I would discover that the five readers I had at this time last year, might have been whittled down to only two…

Which brings me to the issue at hand.  I know, it's been done to death, but what's the deal with the people that comment on the internet.  I mean, I understand that when given the cloak of anonymity, some people turn to complete dicks and post some pretty horrible things.  Sometimes just because they like being troublemakers and stirring the pot, and other times, because perhaps it's socially unacceptable to say the things that they want to say, and doing so in the comments section of a YouTube video is the only chance they ever get to feel the vindication of spewing their bile.

I guess, the thing is, that I was raised under the 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all' school of thought.  So, when I see a video on YouTube that stirs up feelings of anger, sure I might think it, but I have never felt the need to debate it in the comments section.  But obviously a lot of people do.  And I'm fine with that, actually.  It's good to have opinions, and even express them from time to time.  I'm more concerned with the people that don't have anything to say, but still take the time to say it anyways.

For example, I love me some Bill Simmons.  If you know anything about Mr. Simmons, it's that he is famous for three things: a love of all things Boston, lacing his sports commentary with an overabundance of clever pop culture references, and for not be shy about how high his word count gets.  But, more than any of those things, from day one, he has been 'The Sports Guy'.  Basically, a fan that's good at writing.  He never pretends to be an unbiased journalist.  He wears his opinions on his sleeve, and writes from the perspective of a sports fan rather than under the guise of being a sports expert.  He pretty much did for blogging what Quentin Tarantino did for Indie Films.  Much like everyone with a film degree has been trying to make the next Pulp Fiction for the last 15 years, everyone with a keyboard has been trying to give their Simmon's-esque opinion on sports.

Obviously, there's a reason Simmons gets paid to write, and there's a reason why most of these other guys live in their parent's basement and write for Tumblr instead of ESPN.  He's just better at it.  The great thing about sports is that every fan has their own unique opinion, and often times fans can be very passionate about that opinion.  There is no right and wrong, just differing opinions.  And one of the best parts about being a sports fan is debating that opinion.  So, for better or for worse, the way Simmons makes his articles feel like he's having a sports discussion with his buddy at a bar, makes a few too many guys feel like they are that buddy, and are therefore entitled to give their opinions back to him.

Which is fine.  So long as you write it back in an equally clever and insightful way.  I mean, Simmons frequently devotes entire articles to answering questions from his 'Mail Bag', so I'm sure he'd never want the fan interaction to stop.  But I bet he wishes it was sometimes a little more civil.  Of course, as we all know, on the internet, that is more than a little bit too much to ask of some people.

So my question isn't 'why do people feel the need to comment on Simmons articles', but rather 'why do people need to feel the need when they have nothing of merit to say'?

I mean, you don't always have to agree with Simmons, but saying "Hey, I've watched Kobe Bryant for the past 15 years, and he's one of the great players of our generation, regardless what you think of him or the team he plays for.  I think you're a little too blinded with hatred because you're a Boston fan." is a much different thing than saying "You suck Simmons, I hope Kobe runs into you in a dark alley one night and kills your wife and children while you watch helplessly from under the car that he hit you with…"  And if you think that's a horrible overexaggeration, I think you'd be surprised.

Look, I'm not saying everyone needs to brown-nose him all the time, but my question is, if you hate Simmons so much, why are you reading his columns?  Why are you even finishing the article if you're so upset with what he's saying?  Why aren't you stopping after the first paragraph, thinking to yourself 'this isn't for me', and moving on to something else?  And worst of all, why are you wasting your time writing him a hateful comment?

Obviously, this doesn't just apply to Simmons.  It's a microcosm for the entire internet.  If you hate Justin Bieber, why are you burning so many calories by going onto every YouTube video comments section you can find and calling him a 'fag'?  Shouldn't you be looking for music you do like, instead?  When a person you're following on Twitter uses a 'their' instead of a 'there', and misses a comma, why are you responding with a 'Hey, dumbass, where did you go to school?'  If you actually think they're a dumbass, why are you following their account in the first place?  And worse, if you actually idolize them, what do you hope to achieve by pointing out their mistakes? 

I've seen far too many times when someone has had to follow up a tweet several minutes later to point out that yes, they know they made a grammatical mistake, or  at the very least lambast all the people that pointed it out to them.  And it boggles my mind.  I've never once felt the need to correct a person on their grammar.  Especially on the internet.  I know what they were trying to say, and I know, if it was a published work for something important, they would have seen their mistake and fixed it before clicking 'post'.  The best case scenario I can see for pointing out a mistake is that the person you're following thinks to themselves 'geez, all these people totally missed the actually point of that tweet and instead fixated on that one little error… why do I even bother doing this?'

Well, congratulations, now the person whose life you're interested in knowing about has just walked away from their computer.  What did you think was going to happen?  "Oh, you know who seems like a lot of fun?  That guy on twitter that pointed out that I said 'your' instead of 'you're'.  I should fly him out to LA so we can hang out sometime and grow this online friendship into something real!"

I guess what I'm saying is, I just don't know what these people are getting out of it.  A feeling of superiority?  "Hey, Simmons, that article sucked, I write way better than that."  Really?  Then how come he's been getting paid to do it for over ten years, and the only time that something you wrote was ever published was when you posted an ad for your used law mower in the Penny Saver?  If you point out to an NBA player that his tweet was riddled with spelling and grammar errors, do you feel better than him, because you're that much smarter?  I mean, it's no secret that NBA players aren't always the smartest dudes in the room.  But they still make millions, and you don't.  Making them feel like shitty spellers hurts their pride for all of 2.5 seconds.  You might be better at grammar than LeBron James, but you're still going to make $30K this year, and he'll have made that in the 5 seconds that it took him to forget about your comment.  Should you really feel an air of superiority about that?

I guess my whole point is, why do people waste so much time worrying about things that have absolutely no affect on their lives.  The only people that should care about gay marriage are gay people.  If you've never even met a gay person in your life, why do you care if they get married or not?  You can have an opinion on it, sure.  But that's no reason to start holding protests and spewing hatred on the internet.  If more people would stop worrying about the things that didn't affect them, I honestly think this world would be a much better place.  That said, that could be a whole other blog post, and I've already gone much to long on this one already.

I'll simply end by saying, please… just leave me a comment already.