I've downloaded an app which actually does something useful. Whatever website you are on, it will automatically stop you from seeing the comments underneath websites. This user-generated hate-forum is where the most bitter, least important arguments of all time are raging. The very fact that I can't see them isn't perfect - I still remember that they're ongoing - but it's as close to perfect as possible. I dislike these comments at the best of times, not only because I find minutes whiling away while I read in astonishment at some of the variously rabid, naive, or ill-informed things said there. I dislike the bickering and name-calling through the cloak of anonymity (I admit this is done through a pseudonym, but any opinion I've ever expressed here I would be happy to express to your stupid face...). I have noticed that even on the more upmarket websites which offer them, really the views expressed are the same, they just have better spelling. Compare, for example, the often-genocidally racist, always ill-informed and illiterate comments on any youtube video, to the comments offered on, say, The Guardian.
The Guardian is a seemingly liberal newspaper, the pages of which are littered with arguments between disappointed Liberals and obviously Trolling conservatives. None of the people involved seems to notice that not a single person has ever changed their mind on any issue ever through one of these comments. And if that's not the definition of a shit debate, I don't know what is. Even this state of affairs would be tolerable, but things have taken a turn for the worse. Previously, it was possible to sift through the information to gain extra hints (for example, it was through one of these comments that I discovered the excellent show 'Enlightened') or perhaps form an opinion on how people think about an issue. It wasn't worth the time, and that is particularly true now that the Guardian has branched out to further include Americans, who, almost without exception, have noticeably lowered the quality of the discourse, and it wasn't great to start with.
The app, which I will name soon, is a great one, which takes away the guilty pleasure of reading online arguments and allows you to make your own decision. (N.B. As writing this, it crashed, so if any app makers are at a loss of how to spend the next few hours, there's your idea: a name could be 'Troll Bridge' or something)
Anyway, that's all you're getting today.
P
The Guardian is a seemingly liberal newspaper, the pages of which are littered with arguments between disappointed Liberals and obviously Trolling conservatives. None of the people involved seems to notice that not a single person has ever changed their mind on any issue ever through one of these comments. And if that's not the definition of a shit debate, I don't know what is. Even this state of affairs would be tolerable, but things have taken a turn for the worse. Previously, it was possible to sift through the information to gain extra hints (for example, it was through one of these comments that I discovered the excellent show 'Enlightened') or perhaps form an opinion on how people think about an issue. It wasn't worth the time, and that is particularly true now that the Guardian has branched out to further include Americans, who, almost without exception, have noticeably lowered the quality of the discourse, and it wasn't great to start with.
The app, which I will name soon, is a great one, which takes away the guilty pleasure of reading online arguments and allows you to make your own decision. (N.B. As writing this, it crashed, so if any app makers are at a loss of how to spend the next few hours, there's your idea: a name could be 'Troll Bridge' or something)
Anyway, that's all you're getting today.
P
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