Oh, Internet. How you make small people seem so big. Earlier today, after reading the user comments on Huffington Post, I slunk away in exasperation and disappointment. The thing is, I would genuinely love civil discourse over the rainbow variety of polarizing issues at bay, but internet anonymity imbues a handful of indignant underachievers with a fanatical pseudo-bravura that swallows rational dialogue. It’s an electronic playground and everyone’s got dibs on the kick-ass tire swing. In most of the HuffPo contributions, a commenter will posit some outrageous conspiracy involving the words “Bu$h” (with the dollar-bill-y’all “S”), “Repugs,” or “Clinton,” and five minutes later it’s a bitch-slap contest:
Conservative Ass#1: bill
Liberal Turd#1: the republiCONs and bu$h hate poor people and all minorities
…and, so on, so forth, until eight pages later when no thread of similarity exists between the content of the post and the context of the dialogue. It’s hilarious to peruse other totally unrelated articles, only to find the same Billy the Kid saloon brawl at the next bar. Hell, there’s articles on Barry Bonds that somehow manage to inject the logic of their conspiratorial or paranoid political argument into the sports section.
It takes restraint to earnestly approach an open dialogue. I’ll be the first to admit that I fall short of par when it comes to rationally approaching live conversation. So, the internet offers me a time cushion to mold an idea from batshit insane, to, say, mediocre, but juvenile. Yet, so many bloggosquawks waive their right to hash out a not-quite-as-barbarically worded polemic.
For those that read this: please, please sleep on your decision to submit Larry the Cable Guy/Alex Jones influenced, self-humiliating pablum. I’ll try to hold up on my end of the bargain.
Currently Listening to John Coltrane – Ascension
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