by BRENDA BRUNDTLAND-GOVANNI, Alternate Reality News Service Editrix-in-Chief
Okay, Internet trolls, you win.
As of this morning (yesterday morning in France), the Alternate Reality News Service has terminated the comments sections on our Web portal (not TM because we're not giving [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Bill Gates a penny!) with extreme prejudice. Personally, I'm not surprised: when upper management started spewing phrases like "reader engagement," "starting a conversation with the community" and "wage cuts for those wastrel scallywags in editorial" (this last one may have been left over from the last union negotiations), I warned Mikhail Lo-fi that it was a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. Except for the last rationalization. Still.
All the best publications were doing it, Lo-fi argued; I had never taken him for such a Joyner, but we all have high school track moments, I suppose. The move took some of the sting out of the fact that newspapers were cutting back on actual journalists; in his perfect world, newspapers would consist entirely of reader-contributed comments without any original reporting. I will admit that it was a seductive argument, but my doubts were tenacious (they had clearly learned the wrong lessons from the Opiepic In the Heart of the Sea).
As the comments started coming in, I quickly devised a five slap system for rating them:
| slaps | ||
| one | responding to an article with a comment that makes no logical, grammatical or hygienic sense; gratuitous bad language, under five | 1. Obviously, FDR is responsible for kids' lack of respect for their elders these days! 2. What a [EXPLETIVE DELETED] moron! The [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Crusades wouldn't have happened if [EXPLETIVE DELETED] hadn't blown up the moon! |
| two | completely ignoring the article you're supposed to be commenting on and spewing random nonsense; gratuitous bad language, five usages and over | 1. Anything responding to an article on Barack Obama, the 2008 market meltdown or #squigglelivesmatter. 2. You suck, you [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] piece of [EXPLETIVE DELETED] [EXPLETIVE DELETED] squidmashing [EXPLETIVE DELETED]! And, your [EXPLETIVE DELETED] dog is [EXPLETIVE DELETED] ugly, too! |
| three | gratuitous Nazi references (the only exception being comments on articles about Earth Prime 7-9-2-2-5-3 dash omega, where a Dalek invasion was fended off by - you guessed it - Nazis) | Passing a law that claims that sunshine is a good thing in moderation is exactly what Hitler did in 1943! |
| four | ist postings (racist, sexist, ageist, speciesist, Squigglist - not that those bastard Squiggles don't deserve close, harsh, in-your-face scrutiny, but...uhh, that's not relevant here) | Any post that starts, "I'm not [racist, sexist, ageist, agronomist, Klipponist, ADD YOUR OWN PERSONAL PET PREJUDICE HERE], but..." |
| five | anything the least bit negative about me | I'm not going to give you any [EXPLETIVE DELETED] examples of this! If you want to know what it was like, take the worst thing anybody has ever said about you and substitute my name for yours! |
I must admit that, at first, rating the comments was fun; the thought of slapping all of those barely coherent, semi-literate, semi-evolved readers had me giddy with anticipation. People in the office wondered why so much gleeful tittering was coming from my office, a sound that was much more frightening than the moans and growling that they had come to expect.
Over time, however, the pleasure began to pall. As the average number of slaps per posted comment started to asymptotically (literally: the symptom of being an ass) approach five, the joy I took in rating the comments went down, to the point where I actually dreaded reading them.
My personal physician, Doctor Emulio Schlossberg, told me that I had a condition known as "slapping fatigue." Slapping fatigue, an occupational hazard of editors, cellists and Bingo number callers, occurs when the centre of the brain that gets pleasure out of thoughts of physical violence is overused, temporarily burning it out. I had to admit that Doctor Schlossberg had a point when I realized that the thought of slapping him for making this diagnosis gave me no pleasure at all.
The cure was two weeks rest in a dark room while listening to a constant stream of Enya. I decided to close down the comments section of the Web site instead - if I can't enjoy myself, why should anybody else be able to? Besides, Celtic music makes me break out in Pan flutes.
As for people who complain that this is censorship, You're damn right it's censorship! I don't have any responsibility to publish comments by angry, ignorant, bigoted, barely literate people whose only goal in life is to become the Chinese smog of public discourse! Not those we don't have a columnist's contract with, in any case! Besides, isn't the rest of the Internet big enough for you monsters?
Allowing reader comments on our Web site was a noble experiment (by which I mean: gaseous and inert), but I'm happy it's over: those were the longest 12 minutes of my life!