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Saturday, July 12, 2008"The horribleness of commenters isn't really a mystery: Internet anonymity is disinhibiting, and people are basically mean anyway."TIME magazine's annoyingly (yet precise) opinion of you on the internet: A random example: on June 11, a user called way21337 uploaded a video to YouTube. It's titled My new gerbil, and it shows, in fact, a black-and-white gerbil snuffling around cutely in somebody's hand. It is 11 seconds long. By press time, it had acquired 102 comments. Let's take a look! They begin with NewTyhuss, who writes, "sweet!" Things start going south with comment No. 4: "id hit it." (Good one, ZRace67!) After a week, we're down to eldergod: "why dont u shove that gerbil up yur ass and quit posting stupid videos." bwalhof writes, "kill yourself. fast." And so on.Most people will wrongly judge the popularity of a website based on comment sections without really considering that the bloggers themselves will often say outrageous things on their own -- called "sock puppetry" to mimic one person talking between... himself. Other times, two people can banter back and forth 30 times on a website, and the casual observer will see 60 comments. Must be popular. On this blog, I have often received criticism for not opening up my comments section to anonymous bloggers. Still, the readership remains relatively high for Virginia-based blogs, and unlike most sites when comments are made, they do add to the conversation rather than detract (or distract). The endgame results in two types of bloggers thus far. The old school, in it for the free exchange of ideas. Then there's the drama queen, splash-and-trash, attention-whoring folks that never quite overcame their obscurity in high school. And yes, if you take offense, you are clearly in the second category. Better question: Does that make me basically mean? Perhaps... but at least I'm not being anonymous about it.
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JEFFERSONIAD POLL: Whom do you support for Virginia Attorney General?1) John Brownlee2) Ken Cuccinelli AboutShaunKenney.com is one of Virginia's oldest political blogs, focusing on the role of religion and politics in public life. Shaun Kenney, 30, lives in Fluvanna County, Virginia.ContactThe Jeffersoniad
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3 Comments:
...though I would imagine you are happy to see Musgrave on the DCCC targeted list. :)
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