It's an interesting and fairly recent development. If you read a story about Aaron Burr in a newspaper in 1804, your best option for making known to the wider readership of that newspaper your ill opinion of Mr. Burr would be to run out into the street and shout, "Aaron Burr is an undistinguished knave!" (that is the 1804 equivalent of "Aaron Burr sux!") If you truly had as much audacity as many present-day comment-posters seem to have, you might seek Mr. Burr out, and then say, directly to his face, "Mr. Vice-President, thou art an undistinguished knave!" Then he would shoot you right in the stomach. The internet, with all of its screen names and avatars, has provided a wonderful disconnect between angry normal people and the objects of their rage. Unfortunately, this merely redirects that rage towards other normal people, who react defensively, escalating the conflict on the comment posting-board. Political scientists call this an "inadvertent hostility spiral". It is not ideal.
But the anonymity of a screen name cannot protect you from ridicule, as has heretofore been proved in this blog. When you post a comment at the end of an article that is aggressive and belligerent, you put a target on your back. Your grammar and spelling had better be perfect, because the nature of your comment makes other commentators want to have a go at you. It is not in your best interest to be angry and stupid. As a prime example, witness the reaction of a Salt Lake Tribune reader to the (possibly inadvertent) double-posting of a rather long comment by another reader:
you must be a conservative: you use words that aren't words, like "stupidness"
1 comment:
haha. Brilliant! I am going to try and work in the word 'knave' into my vocabulary more. If I was at the 'goggles' factory I would try and put into my assessments ... so then it would be read aloud during proposing.... hahaha.
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