My reporting days took place in the early days of the news/internet convergence, when papers put some of their news online. We had a part time guy who would come in and post the day’s stories and leave. The site was pretty simple.
I got out just in time.
The comment boards are now an expected feature of the online news experience. When the Forum shut them down for a brief time a few years ago, people went ballistic. They felt their rights to free speech were being taken away, rights that they didn’t have 5 years ago in this form. Rights that aren’t actually tied to any law, but try to tell them that this is just a service the Forum provides and they want you to die slowly with at least three crows working on your eyes.
The comment boards are where reason, community, and argument go to die. Continually. Every story, and every comment.
Every person who comments on these boards has a similar desire – to get someone to change their mind and see the world from his point of view. It’s like having the ability to speak to all the drivers around you while in your car and telling them how they are doing it wrong. At the same time, they are trying to do the same.
I have enjoyed reading the comment sections despite all this – in much the same way one enjoys watching reality television. It’s a verbal party with no accountability. The only reason to post to a comment board that will fulfill your need is if you are posting just to poke fun. Try to bring any logic or reason to the party and you will be going home with no one. I enjoy posting as dead horse, a character I bring out whenever the story topic or argument has been ground into dust, pissed on, and sun bleached – yet still somehow people are still trying to convince others to see things from their point of view.
The Fargo Forum comment section is populated by about two dozen regular posters. Each has been posting for years, but never have I seen any of them change their point of view based on someone else’s comments. Read long enough and each will be guilty of the same logical gymnastics they accuse others of. It can be disheartening to see such public verbal belief masturbation with nary an internet cop in sight. There are moderators for the site, but they’ve rarely laid down the law since the early days of the new area voices system. At a conference once, I heard the presenter talk about how the commenters on her site began to self-police, and after a while, they understood the community of commenters and were civil. I don’t see that happening on the Forum, but I can dream.
I try to remember that it’s always the same 24 people posting, which helps keep the despair over the Fargo/Moorhead area to a minimum. The other 175,000 people here really don’t give that much of a shit about these events. Comment boards are largely for the extremists. You can’t reason with an extremist. You don’t commune with an extremist. And you can’t argue with an extremist. It doesn’t work.
Another comment board area I frequently read is on avclub.com. Their commenters also have their faults – most commonly a sense of self-importance and judgmentalism that comes as part of the hipster douchebag package. But they are also pretty funny if you can look past the cynicism.
I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about comment boards, and I hoped that this blog would help to organize them. However, I feel rambling today.
Since I began checking out twitter, I’ve strayed away from my heavier days of trolling the Forum comment boards. I think twitter is the next generation of comment boards. You can follow people as you see fit, don’t have to read crazy people that make you angry and aren't open to new ideas, you can follow the local news reporters, and can get a nice one-liner joke from any of your favorite comedians. Twitter has become the comment board of choice for any news topic of the day – and it never pulls you into a pit of depression over the future of mankind the way that the Forum comment boards can, unless you follow Justin Beiber fans, I suppose.
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