Internet Hate Culture - Why So Many "Comments" Sections Have Been Ditched

After writing his recent article for TIME ('Tyranny of the Mob', Aug. 29, p. 27) on the culture of internet hate gone wild, Joel Stein informed the chief editor he was "going off  Twitter" and also "hopes there will be no comments in the online edition", i.e. for the net trolls to come after him. (In his 4 page piece he cites several examples of being net-stalked and receiving hate missives, including from losers like Andrew Auernhiemer who barked in one tweet "You people (meaning Jews) belong in a fucking oven".  Such is what the web, with all its initial promise, has descended into: a huge dog pit, with snarls, howls, bites and free floating excrement.

But what about the comments sections that typically accompany the major media sources, and which are usually allocated for reader inputs or exchanges?  In respect of these, Alicia Shepherd  recently wrote  on smirkingchimp.com:

"NPR is joining a growing list of media organizations that have said “finito” to comments including, ‘This American Life,’ Reuters, Recode, Mic, the Chicago Sun-Times, Popular Science, CNN, The Toronto Star and The Week."

This should not be surprising as we read in the recent TIME of the rise of hate on the Internet in media and  sites as  diverse as Reddit, Twitter and even Facebook. Sadly, hate speech and vitriol  has become the new coin of the realm thanks to mentally deranged trolls who get off on pissing in public - and crapping too. 

In the lengthy TIME article,   Joel Stein gives a number of  other examples (including the attacks on black actress Lesley Jones)  that show how far down into the toilet our net culture has deteriorated.   It wasn't always thus. I can recall from as early as 1994 having very heated discussions on topics in the old AOL forums. But though these debates (especially on the atheist  boards) were animated they never descended into the sort of invective with racial and other hate so abundant today.

The reach of hate culture  was eventually bound to extend to the comments section of the big corporate news media.  By 2004, when comments sections were initiated on news sites  like The Miami Herald, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Baltimore Sun and WaPo, they were hailed as a means to "democratize the media".  The original template also allowed a two-way conversation between readers and the journalists who served them. But that didn't last long, and the journalists themselves soon found out they were unable to enter into debates without being tracked and excoriated by assorted nuts with chips on their shoulders.

What one also found, as I have in the comments sections of The Financial Times,  is that  readers are often talking to and past each other because most of the resident journalists don’t engage. Alicia Shepherd noted there’s a reason.  She refers to how  Chris Cillizza enthusiastically embraced his audience when he started his political blog, The Fix, in 2006, on The Washington Post.  According to Cillizza:

“I would regularly go into the comments to interact (or try to interact) with readers. I incentivized and deputized regular commenters to keep order. Then I gave up. Because none of the tactics or strategies we tried ever had any real impact on the quality of the dialogue happening on The Fix. No matter what the original post was about, a handful of the loudest — or most committed — voices in the room hijacked the comments thread to push their own agendas.”

Which is much the same take that Joel Stein had in his TIME article, noting that trolls ("most likely to be sociopaths with Asperger's") have now taken over most discussion venues and filled them with their hot air and venom.  Stein also cites studies by psychologists who refer to the "disinhibition effect" by which contributing factors such as anonymity, invisibility and not communicating face to face in real time, encourage brash behavior. Stein insists this has led to "the stripping away of mores that society spent millennia building".

The point is that the journalists,  as well as many of their major media,  have finally tired of sponsoring enclaves for unhinged simpletons to vent and hate- and having to constantly monitor and censor. Hence, removing comments sections. (This blog also has a comments section but it is rigorously moderated. I welcome challenges to any arguments or posts  but they  must have a  logical and coherent basis in making specific points. They can't be just shooting from the hip in the equivalent of a verbal 'drive by')

Shepherd herself, as an  NPR ombudsman from 2007 to 2011, claims  firsthand to know  "how futile and frustrating comments sections are."  She further points out that even though NPR had a sign-up system, and hired an outside moderator to check comments before posting, a listener could still create an alias and write whatever he (usually men) liked. The comments "were often mean-spirited and did little to foster civil conversation."

Shepherd,  in a 2011 essay on comment sections for the Nieman Reports,  wrote: “The goal is dialogue, but it’s pretty clear that the debate between dialogue and diatribe is still being waged. From the view I’ve had for the last three years as NPR’s ombudsman I’d say diatribe is winning—hands down.” It’s still true today.

Why is this? Why does diatribe trump dialogue? My own theory is that too few netizens know how to conduct a civil dialogue. They are affected by the "disinhibition" effect and also lack the patience to develop rigorous and consistent arguments to build strong dialogue. It's much easier just to deliver drive -by shots with little or no information for support.  But this isn't just in comments sections, it abounds in other places on the net. It's also one reason I stopped frequenting the Deja News online discussion groups, as on the JFK assassination. There was too much noise, not enough signal.

Shepherd writes (ibid.):

"The trolls who rule the comment seas may actually have won because they often scare away people with their vicious attacks. An infinitesimal number of NPR’s 25 to 35 million unique monthly users bothered to join story-page conversations."

Moreover: “Far less than one percent of that audience is commenting, and the number of regular comment participants is even smaller,” wrote Scott Montgomery, NPR’s managing editor for digital news announcing the shutdown.  He adds:

“Only 2,600 people have posted at least one comment in each of the last three months –– 0.003 percent of the 79.8 million NPR.org users who visited the site during that period.”

NPR’s current ombudsman, Elizabeth Jensen, noted that caretaking NPR’s commenting system becomes more expensive as the number of comments increases –sometimes costing twice what was budgeted. So basically, NPR decided it’s not worth the money to engage only a sliver of its audience  While Jensen notes cost is certainly a critical factor for any media company, the more valid question remains: What is the value of commenting unless it’s tightly moderated and journalists engage?  Well, on the evidence, not much!

That is a question more and more websites and blogs will have to address in coming years given the troll culture and its dregs is only likely to grow -  like a cancer. You can maybe treat and eliminate a biologic cancer with surgery or radiation, but I don't know exactly what the corresponding treatment would be to tame the hate-troll social cancer metastasizing across the net.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/10/ditching-online-discussion-groups.html

Why I Don't Waste Time Posting On JFK Issues in Google Groups

Google groups is a later iteration of Usenet newsgroups and newsgroup culture after Google took them over ca. 2001. According to a Wikipedia entry:.

By 2001, the Deja search service was shut down. In February 2001, Google acquired Deja News (and its archive), and transitioned its assets to groups.google.com.Users were then able to access these Usenet newsgroups through the new Google Groups interface.

But cursory inspection shows that contrary to the claim of being a better information repository, Google groups is as beset by noise from trolls, morons and screwballs as Usenet was in the mid 90s. In fact, I'd say even more.  The JFK assassination is a case in point and shows pretty well that most of the numskulls who post aren't interested in serious discussion - but drive -by snark that would embarrass an intelligent 8-year old. But this was one reason that in 2001 I stopped forthwith with Deja news and never signed onto Google groups. Too much noise, not enough signal.

In the current discussions in the JFK assassination forum author Richard Charnin has tried valiantly to introduce the resident peanut gallery to my recent JFK assassination book, but with zero success. He's received one to two line responses (again,  most that a 2nd grader wouldn't write), ranging from: "Jeez why should I waste money on some book full of CT shibboleths and nonsense!" (Amazing he could use the word "shibboleths")  to "I bet he don't have a job and sits in his mom's basement writing this stuff!" (Actually no, I'm nearly 69 and long since retired - able to travel and work on my own projects. You should be so lucky, Sparky!)

But this is the sort of drivel one must put up with if he dares to cast pearls before swine. Because given their nature, swine won't appreciate what's on offer and will generally use the occasion only to evacuate their bowels - or in this case resort to verbal diarrhea via their keyboards.  This is the low quality dreck that serious assassination researchers have to put up with – because these semi-educated (on the assassination) critics only serve to clutter the cybersphere with yet more disinformation and ignorance when some of us are attempting to educate our countrymen as to what really went down – based on actual documents released on the basis of the JFK Records Act – not half-assed speculations or conjectures.

Heck, most of these turkeys couldn't distinguish Oswald's CI/SIG 201 file from his 74-500 file, far less Kennedy's  NSAM-263 from Johnson's NSAM-273.  I warrant they've never even read them ....or the cables from the Mexico City station (dispatched compliments of station chief David Atlee Phillips)  that clearly sets up Oswald as the patsy. They talk and write about this being "more CT nonsense" but the very writing of such idiocy shows they're not invested in the truth (as James Douglass shows in his 'JFK and the Unspeakable') but denial and propaganda.

Another dolt actually asked Mr. Charnin if I ever "came up with an original theory on the assassination".  But why would I when the existing JFK records, released files clearly show  - to any person with an IQ at least one standard deviation beyond normal - that there is no need to "reinvent the wheel" as it were. All the evidence is there and points to a CIA-instigated hit - which this bozo would learn about if he possessed the reading level (2nd year college) to appreciate my book. Also, to appreciate my original mathematical approach to the analysis of the backyard photos (using fractional calculus) and the rifle shots.

But see, when people lack aptitude - either in reading or mathematics- the only response they're left with is the default  put down, irresponsible (uninformed) criticism, and simpleton snark. They aren't going to applaud the work - because hell, they aren't prepared to exercise their minds to a degree that exceeds accepting  more than the simplest answers. It's more comfortable to remain brainwashed zombies gobbling up lone nut propaganda.

This brings up my other main point on why I won't waste time with these clueless nimrods: they already have made their minds up on what's true and what's false - just like the climate change deniers. It is what I have earlier called "false knowledge syndrome".  As I noted in a post elaborating on the condition:

"Sure, all humans want to believe they’re rational, but Kahan's work shows that in reality most people employ their reason  ex post facto to  rationalize what they already want to believe. Thus, if they already believe global warming is a "hoax" their brains won't work in order to process new information that invalidates that, but rather they will search for bogus information (say from a Terry Lovell, or Richard Lindzen, or Jason Lisle) that reinforces their misperceptions. "

Let's also bring in another related observation for those who so vehemently (and mindlessly) defend the lone nut bunkum (which one Mensa Bulletin letter writer in 1995  compared to "accepting the virgin birth").  Then there is this percipient take compliments of Matt Ridley in his Wall Street Journal column of Sept. 10, 2011:

"How do we know that our own rational rejections of conspiracy theories are not themselves infected with beliefs so strong that they are, in effect, conspiracy theories too?"

A point surely missed by the uneducated yahoos who inhabit Google Groups, namely the JFK discussion forum.  Because if a rational man like Richard Charnin (and even long time researcher Anthony Marsh- who noted whenever he gave an original theory it was shot down in the forum) can be so summarily dismissed there is no hope for rational exchange.  Further, the evidence is manifestly clear that the bulk of respondents are fools and trolls just as wedded to their own wacko conspiracy theories (in this case irrationally anti-CT) as those who currently believe U.S. Army special forces are in Texas for an Obama "takeover"

The worst tragedy is that, leaving out all subjective back and forth,  these morons are totally unable to see how the basic physics - mechanics points to conspiracy.( I.e. grasping that Jackie's limo  trunk motion is impossible for a rear shot such as from the Book Depository, because the direction of linear momentum is always in the direction the bullet travels)  It is almost like trying to impart or teach Chinese to chimps.  As for the mathematical proofs - such as via Charnin's Poisson  analysis or use of my fractional calculus - when you  have to deal with those possessing subnormal IQs (who wouldn't be able to do even basic algebra) you're not going to get kudos because again...showing your work is analogous to showing Chinese to a chimp. A chimp isn't likely to read that page of Chinese characters but more probably defecate on it.

Bear in mind these misfits who find it so easy to slam a reflective book of analysis they haven't read,  likely couldn't even write a convincing comic book. But this is what you get when you offer substantive fare for consideration to mentally deficient imps who are more at ease wallowing in their own verbal feces and hurling it at anyone who dares try to enter their 'den' for education purposes.

This is why it's a total waste of time, mental capital and energy to attempt to dispense any pearls of wisdom regarding the JFK assassination (and I'd guess global warming as well) on Google Groups. It is simply not a venue conducive to intellectual exercise or exchange.

If I were Richard Charnin I wouldn't waste another minute of time or mental energy on the Google Groups JFK forum. He's better served writing a follow-up to his excellent original conspiracy book - this time focusing on LBJ's role. Perhaps doing a Poisson analysis showing that what too many regard as disconnected, "coincidental" events: i.e.  destruction of the bloody suit coat, cleaning and disassembly of the limo and even the Bethesda autopsy- could only have been orchestrated by Johnson. He had the means, motive and opportunity (as well as the power)  to do it and everything to lose (owing to the exploding Bobby Baker scandal) if JFK wasn't in a box by the time the entourage left Big D.

Something to consider.