photo: This meme I made a few weeks ago really has nothing to do with the subject of the post. Just a dumb joke that apparently I have to explain way too often therefore taking away from the legitimacy of the joke.
The other day I stumbled upon the very first post of this blog. Written in February of 2006 I invited readers to leave comments on my posts.
Back in the day when blogs first became a thing there was an idea that blogs, due to the fact they had a comments section, could democratize and perhaps "civilize" public discourse.
How naive we were back in those days. I remember reading the comments underneath news articles on my favorite news sites in the late 90's and being shocked how awful some people were in their comments. That was before I understood the concept of the internet troll. That was before I understood how internet anonymity emboldened people to say shockingly rude things to other people. Seems quaint now to see the best in people.
Now there's a mantra to people who post a lot on the internet..."Don't read the comments."
Several years ago I disabled comments on my blog. First of all, very few people actually read this blog and I rarely got comments. Discourse never really happened. Secondly, I began to get a lot of spam comments selling all sorts of things with links that I would never had recommended clicking. I actually only got one or two random troll comments in over a decade before I finally disabled the comment section. I honestly was more concerned with the spam and potential viruses that come along with the spam comments than any trolls.
Still, seeing my post asking for comments took me back for a few moments to a day when we actually thought civil discourse was possible in the blogosphere. What an optimistic time. However, I'm not going to enable comments.
