"I wasn’t always a comments-hater."
September 10, 2015 3:35 PM   Subscribe

 
Nothing to see here, move along.
posted by Riki tiki at 3:40 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm kinda hoping to see no one comment on this. Oops...
posted by happyroach at 3:41 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Unless you can make a good case for a thing having comments, that thing should not have comments. The case for comments should probably include moderation, some form of reasonably persistent online identity for commenters and other decent measures for making sure the comments don't become a cesspool.
posted by Artw at 3:44 PM on September 10, 2015 [34 favorites]


Metafilter - where the comments page is the FPP about the comments in a comments page regarding an article about comments.
posted by Chuffy at 3:44 PM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


WOOD-TV, channel 8 in grand rapids has just stopped allowing comments in its news sections - things were getting a little out of hand, i guess

WWMT, channel 3 in kalamazoo, changed from an anonymous comment policy to one where people had to use their facebook accounts to comment - it's like a ghost town now

this seems to be a trend
posted by pyramid termite at 3:44 PM on September 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


I actually like scanning the comments on certain news sites (New York Times, Guardian) to get a sense of how a hot button news story plays out with the general public. Of course, those two examples are heavily moderated.
posted by monospace at 3:48 PM on September 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


Most sundry articles don't need comments, but they do need feedback. A good multiple choice selection would be adequate, giving readers who disagree or agree a simple way to express it (with varying degrees). Then everyone can see the general response in a matter of seconds, and how many people responded.
posted by Brian B. at 3:48 PM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


I see no good coming from attaching one of the worst features of Reddit to everything.
posted by Artw at 3:50 PM on September 10, 2015 [7 favorites]


WWMT, channel 3 in kalamazoo, changed from an anonymous comment policy to one where people had to use their facebook accounts to comment - it's like a ghost town now

A number of sites are using the FB authentication and yeah, it's cut down a bit on some of the abuse. Still, I am impressed every single day, and sometimes several times a day with things people will say under their own names.

Also, how much free time to some of these racists have ? I just don't understand how some of the local shitbrains have time to comment and respond to dozens of news stories a day. I half wonder sometimes if they aren't bots.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 3:52 PM on September 10, 2015 [16 favorites]


yo dawg i herd you hate comments so we have comments on your comments about comments so we can comment on your comments about comments
or something
posted by entropicamericana at 3:53 PM on September 10, 2015 [7 favorites]


This is about as meta as metafilter gets: We are now commenting about comments about commenting. We're down the rabbit hole now.

Online comments for things like newspaper sites always seemed like a bad idea to me, and that was before the spammers and the haters ruined everything.

Comments make sense when everyone is an equal -- metafilter is a perfect example, the FPP poster is a member and so are the commenters.

When equality isn't there, comments are ridiculous. An online news site pays money to writers who have to go through an extensive vetting process before they're hired, and then lets anyone with Internet access add to their articles as if their input was equally important? How could that possibly go wrong...

And this isn't a freedom of speech issue. Freedom means you can get your own blog, it doesn't mean you get to write for the New York Times just because you have an internet connection.

If you moderate heavily you can make it work, which is exactly what newspapers figured out in the 1900s. Anyone can write a letter to the editor, but we only publish the good ones.
posted by mmoncur at 3:54 PM on September 10, 2015 [22 favorites]


It's comments all the way down.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:00 PM on September 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


A number of sites are using the FB authentication and yeah, it's cut down a bit on some of the abuse. Still, I am impressed every single day, and sometimes several times a day with things people will say under their own names.

The local newspaper (here in Virginia) switched over to this system as well. Mostly it's allowed the neoconfederates to have Nathan Bedford Forrest avatars.
posted by indubitable at 4:00 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Facebook also requires Facebook authentication and I doubt I'd want to read anything people are writing on there.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:02 PM on September 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


Most sundry articles don't need comments, but they do need feedback. A good multiple choice selection would be adequate, giving readers who disagree or agree a simple way to express it (with varying degrees). Then everyone can see the general response in a matter of seconds, and how many people responded.

On the other hand, it sometimes makes up for consistently half-assed reporting. I'm occasionally pleasantly surprised to read a local story where the comments fill in the background on the legal issues involved or local history surrounding something.
posted by indubitable at 4:03 PM on September 10, 2015 [10 favorites]


does anyone read the posts down here?
posted by The Bellman at 4:04 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


Nope
posted by blue_beetle at 4:11 PM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Valenti writes, "I saw the comments section as a way to destabilize the traditional writer/reader relationship – no longer did audiences need to consume an article without a true opportunity to respond. Comments even made my writing better those days; feedback from readers broadened the way I thought and sometimes changed my mind."

It's a shame that this is so much down to economics. Comment sections can still be this way (look at MeFi!) but it requires focused and paid moderation to make it really useful-- something I suppose most media sources would be hard pressed to afford. With moderation, I really like comments. It's a great way to crowdsource different points of view on the same topic from a variety of people.
posted by frumiousb at 4:12 PM on September 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


Most sundry articles don't need comments, but they do need feedback. A good multiple choice selection would be adequate...

Unless there are controls in place multiple choice selections will be just as easy to hijack as online polls.
posted by plastic_animals at 4:16 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


There's a non-zero chance we're going to elect a walking, talking internet comment as our next President.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:24 PM on September 10, 2015 [15 favorites]


Here's my issue with the argument:

"It’s true, I could just stop reading comments. But I shouldn’t have to. Ignoring hateful things doesn’t make them go away, and telling women to simply avoid comments is just another way of saying we’re too lazy or overwhelmed to fix the real problem."

So instead of "click here if you want to read comments" she would rather have no comments at all? Like she said, ignoring hateful things doesn't make them go away. Removing the ability to comment won't cut down on hateful attitudes, it'll just make it easier to ignore. Not sure why having the option of reading or not reading the comments is worse than not having the ability to comment at all.

"telling women to simply avoid comments is just another way of saying we’re too lazy or overwhelmed to fix the real problem."

Wouldn't promoting the removal of commenting systems a way of saying that women can't handle the choice of whether or not to read the comments? Is it too much for it to be a personal choice?
posted by I-baLL at 4:25 PM on September 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


Obligatory link to shutup.css, a handy, free way to selectively show/hide comments on just about every website.
posted by sparkletone at 4:25 PM on September 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


Not having open pools of shit is the preferred solution to people accidentally catching a whiff of them. Also there is very little downside.
posted by Artw at 4:30 PM on September 10, 2015 [14 favorites]


So instead of "click here if you want to read comments" she would rather have no comments at all? Like she said, ignoring hateful things doesn't make them go away. Removing the ability to comment won't cut down on hateful attitudes, it'll just make it easier to ignore. Not sure why having the option of reading or not reading the comments is worse than not having the ability to comment at all.

There is something to be said for the idea of "bad comment escalation," that the existence of shitty online behavior encourages even shittier behavior and discourages constructive engagement. So a loss of venues to comment might reduce hateful attitudes by denying them a place to grow and reinforce each other.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:32 PM on September 10, 2015 [11 favorites]


If the option is "click here to view comments" then how is that an open pool of shit? It's more like a closed pool of shit.
posted by I-baLL at 4:32 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


"So a loss of venues to comment might reduce hateful attitudes by denying them a place to grow and reinforce each other."

That would be technically implying that hateful attitudes did not exist nor flourish before the internet. Hateful attitudes to grow and the way to stop them is to counteract them with non-hateful attitudes. You're also denying venues to non-hateful attitudes. I personally think that if commenting will be disabled on most sites then the internet will end up much worse.
posted by I-baLL at 4:36 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Fucking-A
posted by clavdivs at 4:42 PM on September 10, 2015


You're also denying venues to non-hateful attitudes.

Pffffffff.

I think we've effectively eliminated non-hateful comments as a likely outcome of undermoderated comments sections left to themselves.
posted by Artw at 4:42 PM on September 10, 2015 [8 favorites]


> Removing the ability to comment won't cut down on hateful attitudes, it'll just make it easier to ignore.

I think this is kinda wrong, and I think it's important to think about why. Comment sections don't just somehow open a clear window onto a discourse that's happening one way or the other. There are things about the structure of a medium like the comments that reinforce/reward some kinds of behavior and discourage others. I'm doing a thing right now that is part of that structure. I'm disagreeing with a comment in a comment partly because I get a little hit of whatever neurochemical from disagreement and argument, from the prospect that other people might agree with me disagreeing with you, and so on. When you look at a toxic place on the internet, it's not just toxic because it's revealing some pre-existing condition. It's toxic because in some environments, toxicity accumulates and reinforces itself.

Anyway. Valenti may not have written the most insightful thing I've ever read about comments, but it's one more entry in the vast log of apparently sensible people who sensibly hate the comments, because the comments are poisonous garbage. I don't think they're poisonous garbage just because people's heads are full of poisonous garbage. Is that a factor? Sure. A major one. But there's more to it than that.

(I don't think there's any actual irony in saying this on a site defined by the comments. You can treat the comments here as either uncommonly decent enough to represent a rounding error or as a fundamentally different beast. And hell, even here, there are plenty of threads I nope right the fuck out of, because it's not like we're magically immune to the failure modes, it's just that a lot of them are consciously defused through hard work.)
posted by brennen at 4:44 PM on September 10, 2015 [16 favorites]


If the option is "click here to view comments" then how is that an open pool of shit? It's more like a closed pool of shit.


Not having a pool of shit at all:
a) simpler to implement.
b) no actual downside.
c) denies an environment to harmful microorganisms.
posted by Artw at 4:45 PM on September 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


This reminds me of the first dipshit grievance I ever heard against Anita Sarkeesian: that she had the nerve to disable comments on her first Tropes vs. Women video. Nothing is as angry as a sealion that can't crap up a beach.

Next, we need to get rid of Youtube video annotations.
posted by Sauce Trough at 4:52 PM on September 10, 2015 [21 favorites]


I'll put it another way: Why are memeplexen/hatemobs like Gamergate or the Whatever Puppies so able to inflict damage and reproduce themselves across so much of the web? I'd argue that part of it is that they've adapted to an architecture premised on non-judgmentally providing an equal-opportunity platform or venue for discussion and feedback and all of that.

I don't think the people who built the early web were fools, or that their impulses towards radically democratic forms and anybody-can-chime-in modes were bad. I was right there, having those same impulses. I still think that way, a lot of the time, in a fashion modified by a certain amount of bitter experience. But I do think that we need to come to terms with the cumulative weakness of systems that rely so thoroughly on good-faith interaction at scale. Especially now that the scale we're talking about is, basically, human civilization. Because we have got all these mechanisms meant to extend democratic and anarchic processes that essentially have no immune system, and so now we're watching their subversion by some really horrifying pathogens into reproducing something that looks a hell of a lot like nascent fascism.
posted by brennen at 5:01 PM on September 10, 2015 [18 favorites]


I like online comments when they occur in the context of a persistent community whose values I generally endorse and when I trust the moderation to be fair, thoughtful and respectful of that community. Every other situation turns into a horrible showcase of all the worst humanity has to offer. Not only do I nope out of the comment section, I eventually stop visiting the site. The rest of my life is exhausting and stressful and I have zero interest in making my online experience just as exhausting. So, basically, I hate online comments. Metafilter is pretty okay though. Most days.
posted by langtonsant at 5:04 PM on September 10, 2015 [6 favorites]


What if the MEFi model of the five buck bar to entry could be extended - sort of like a Disqus comment company but with five bucks entry. Troll or do hateful stuff and you're out your five bucks plus another five to get back online again.

I wonder how many places on the web would be willing to subscribe to such a comment company just to raise the overall level of discourse?
posted by AGameOfMoans at 5:07 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


That would be technically implying that hateful attitudes did not exist nor flourish before the internet. Hateful attitudes to grow and the way to stop them is to counteract them with non-hateful attitudes. You're also denying venues to non-hateful attitudes.

No, it would be stating that unmoderated comment areas are a breeding ground for bad attitudes, building on and reinforcing each other. Certainly, hateful attitudes existed before the internet, but they didn't have such a wide audience. And, since bad commenting seems to almost universally drive out good commenting (as well as silencing the original posters in some cases), I'd say your second sentence has been pretty seriously brought into question, along with the third. When hatefiul comments reach a certain point, there is no room for non-hateful comments.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:09 PM on September 10, 2015 [12 favorites]


>When hatefiul comments reach a certain point, there is no room for non-hateful comments.

Precisely! Plus it takes only a handful of dedicated hateful commenters to destroy a community of thousands.
posted by AGameOfMoans at 5:11 PM on September 10, 2015 [9 favorites]


"that the existence of shitty online behavior encourages even shittier behavior and discourages constructive engagement"

I think this sometimes is a real effect, but somebody needs to study it. I also think the internet can deepen people's negative emotional responses by feeding reinforcement back on emotionally distorted/exaggerated thoughts and beliefs under certain conditions. Only have personal experience with the effect and anecdotal reasons for believing it, but I do.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:25 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's also not really possible to counteract a lot of the hateful comments on Valenti's Guardian articles. They're often not substantive. They're snide, dismissive, condescending and occasionally cruel, but they rarely actually engage with her argument, whatever it is.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:30 PM on September 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


A couple years ago, there was a study about the effects that reading uncivil comments had on people reading news articles. The results will not surprise you.
posted by rtha at 5:38 PM on September 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


Comments already happen elsewhere anyway. I read Stereogum, and there's often more comments on their Facebook posts to articles than there are on the articles themselves. The downside is quality - if Stereogum were to disable site-based commentary, the only comments would be on Facebook, and would consist of lots of "@Jane Doe, check this out!!!!" or "This is so stupid." Stereogum has some trolls, but it also has a core set of commenters that I enjoy as a lurker and sometimes contributor, that really define the site for me more than the posts themselves.

That's just one site, but I think eliminating comments to eliminate trolls is like plowing the garden under to prevent weeds.
posted by papayaninja at 5:51 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


pyramid termite: "things were getting a little out of hand, i guess"

Yeah, basically nothing will teach you how many of your neighbors are racists as the comments section of a local news website.

I-baLL: "Removing the ability to comment won't cut down on hateful attitudes, it'll just make it easier to ignore. Not sure why having the option of reading or not reading the comments is worse than not having the ability to comment at all. "

I don't know, man, whether or not I READ the comment section on local news articles that mentioned me calling me a fat bitch and claiming I gave blow jobs to reporters in exchange for favorable coverage, it was still THERE, affecting my life in my community because other people who interact with me could read it. And it absolutely led to people egging each other on in the comment section and escalating the behavior. A comment section that's optional to read and only crazy people read it turns into a charming meeting place for crazy people to meet and greet and reinforce each other's terribleness.

I'm not so worried about Barack Obama being eviscerated in comment sections. He's got a Secret Service to deal with that shit. But the pernicious comment sections on local news sites always explode when, for example, a black teenager commits a minor crime, and you can read 60 people using vicious, racist language to condemn a CHILD for a minor property crime like vandalism, to attack the parents, to say things like, "I wonder if anybody's told dad's boss what a bad father he is?", to make wild accusations about the family, and to make that all eternally googleable. WHAT EARTHLY GOOD IS ANY OF THAT?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:17 PM on September 10, 2015 [43 favorites]


None. None good.
posted by brennen at 6:34 PM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


how much free time to some of these racists have ?
What was that recent story about Russia having an office building of full-time comment trolls? I have long assumed that some of the billionaire-funded PACs is paying racist trolls on a per-comment basis. A major source of income in many trailer parks with wifi.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:16 PM on September 10, 2015


"There are those who leave comments on other people’s blogs, sometimes lots and lots of comments, sometimes nasty, clever, brilliant, monumentally stupid or filthy comments."

I've always known that Metafilter and this online commenting thing would pass. Waiting for the NYT to close the circle on this fad in 5, 4, 3...
posted by DaShiv at 7:59 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love comments. I don't scroll down on youtube, but most other sites I at least glance at them. If they are terrible, I stop; rarely do I see anything traumatic apart from on a very specific subset of political issues.

There are tons of sites that have nothing to do with politics: how to hang doors, or cool new beetles, or physics news, or children's products, etc, etc, and the comments to these things are often invaluable, just as the comments are here. The fact that a few highly-polarized political issues concentrate the assholes of the world doesn't mean that the vast majority of stuff out there is similarly appalling. Being against comments overall just seems weirdly anti-social, when there so much great stuff out there in everyone's heads. And websites without comments just feel empty and dead, and oddly uninterested in what their readers think. I appreciate the engineering problem of maintaining a community, but I think one of the things people do to make it harder on themselves is to try to be "fair" to the assholes; much easier just to instantly ban or delete anyone who seems like a jerk. Better to have a unipolitical community than none at all -- there's still tons of diversity and disagreement within the left or right. Plus, the vast majority of even political sites are much, much smaller -- and therefore much more manageable -- than any of the ones discussed in the essays here, even including local news sites. Generalizing from a small subset of popular and political sites to "comments" in general seems like a mistake.
posted by chortly at 8:50 PM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


chortly: Unfortunately there are three big problems with online comments, regardless of the topic.

1. They work when the site is unpopular. That's why many niche sites have great comments sections. It's not because the communities are apolitical, it's because they're small. When your site is small, there's only one reason for people to show up there--your content. When it's bigger, people show up just to make noise for the audience.

You can watch a microcosm of this happen on every Youtube video ever. They start with knowledgeable comments from a few dedicated folks who are invested in the video's subject, then some time passes, then for whatever reason the larger Youtube community finds them and they are filled with hate and memes and stupidity.

Sure, some websites (and some Youtube videos) stay small and unpopular for years, but it can always happen.

2. Increasingly, there are problems with spam from bots and comment farms. Unlike the real "community" these don't care if you are popular or not, and dealing with them quickly becomes a full-time job. (It sounds simple to just delete them, right? Now imagine that there are 14,000 new comments on your post. It can take literally hours or days to remove them all, and good luck trying not to lose the few "real" comments in the process.)

3. If you're female, and you write anything on the Internet, no matter how small or unpopular the site may be, you'll have creepy and harassing comments in virtually no time.

--

Each of these issues has solutions, but they're complicated, and often expensive. So I always understand and sympathize if a site chooses not to have comments.
posted by mmoncur at 9:57 PM on September 10, 2015 [8 favorites]


An online news site pays money to writers who have to go through an extensive vetting process before they're hired, and then lets anyone with Internet access add to their articles as if their input was equally important?

I actually think their input is equally important, since most of what the Guardian allows comments on is politics opinion pieces pushing very standard soft propaganda (not 'hard news', which obviously you've got to be on the ground or have contacts to write).

The 'extensive vetting' for a job at the Guardian is basically attending Oxford or Cambridge university, and then truly believing that what you write is not propaganda (see: Chomsky).

The fact that some commenters abuse their opportunity doesn't cancel out the fact that I've very often read interesting and well-written opinions in the comments of the Guardian and elsewhere (OK, not Youtube).

a few highly-polarized political issues concentrate the assholes of the world


Ironically, it's partly the way the debate is framed and controlled above the line that makes, say, Israel-Palestine discussion so idiotic below the line. Basically the media goes to great lengths to make us all stupid, ruthlessly stripping out the real issues behind political-historical change, and then laments the fact that they find themselves talking to morons.
posted by colie at 11:42 PM on September 10, 2015


Unmoderated comments are the one true democracy. Why do you hate Freedom™ and America?
posted by johnnyace at 12:06 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


There are tons of sites that have nothing to do with politics: how to hang doors, or cool new beetles, or physics news, or children's products, etc, etc.... The fact that a few highly-polarized political issues concentrate the assholes of the world doesn't mean that the vast majority of stuff out there is similarly appalling.

I think you seriously underestimate the ability of commenters to turn any subject into a political cesspool. (When this Yellowstone supervolcano blows up, at least it'll get rid of Barry Obummer!!!)

I will never forget the exchange I saw in one comment thread back in 2008. Some right-wing troll showed up to complain that Obama was "throwing his pastor under the bus." Then another right-wing troll arrived to lecture the first one that he was getting the canned talking points wrong: he's throwing his grandmother under the bus, that's what we say, remember, it's the pastor who's a racist. Pretty much the best evidence that, like the Russian office of internet comments keyboard warriors, some conservative group is organizing and paying these guys.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 2:32 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


In related news, The Verge has decided been forced by a decrease in click revenue, to turn their comment system back on.
posted by fairmettle at 2:52 AM on September 11, 2015


The Verge's sibling site Vox is still comment-free making it one of the few political sites to resist the click-bait.
posted by octothorpe at 3:49 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Bad comments are a system failure
posted by bukvich at 6:20 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


As if to prove my point, I read exactly one story in the local news yesterday, about a kid who, through multiple parental divorces and remarriages, lives in three places and has a somewhat unclear residential situation for the purposes of public school enrollment. The school system he's been attending since he was five is overenrolled and is trying to prove he's fraudulently enrolled so they can kick him out and they did like 6 a.m. "house checks" to try to catch him sleeping in the wrong place.

There are thirty-four comments and most of them are along these lines (keep in mind this is about a 14-year-old high school freshman): "[student] is a drug addict and has gone down hill sense 8th grade ... The family is no good and it would make me happy and about 99% of [town] happy to see them gone. Btw [mom] **** you" -- "[Mom] your worthless you left your kids home by them selves for days and nights on end. [Student] is a complete train wreck and drug addict and im still tryin to figure out how hes not in prison. Honestly you shouldnt be aloud in [town] let alone their schools." -- " the main comment of the article shows how credible [mom] is! Personally I would not break the law and screw those who pay taxes to please my teenager, but, we all parent different. May want to ask [totally unrelated situation from several years ago] how well it worked for him when he tried renting a home in [other town] to get out of paying tuition for his kids."

It also goes off on some tangents about how taxes are evil and Obama is coming to do bed checks on your kids while they sleep. And a little interesting substantive discussion of the residency issues. But mostly crazy people insulting the family and calling a 14-year-old a lying drug addict. So great!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:53 AM on September 11, 2015 [17 favorites]


It also goes off on some tangents about how taxes are evil and Obama is coming to do bed checks on your kids while they sleep. And a little interesting substantive discussion of the residency issues. But mostly crazy people insulting the family and calling a 14-year-old a lying drug addict. So great!

This is like everything awful about local newspapers multiplied by everything awful about online comments.
posted by atoxyl at 12:54 PM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Wasn't there a bit somewhere about how it used to be it took time and effort and dedication to write a letter to the editor. So only the most devoted cranks would put forth the passion into doing so, while leaving the rest of the cranks to quietly (for certain values of quiet) make the lives of everyone else around them miserable, while leaving the masses alone.

Like others in this thread, I am both astonished by how often I see people post such idiotic, cruel and stupid things under their own names (hey, at least I have a pseudonym here! not hard to find who I am, but still, it's not a direct link).

Once, I made the mistake of leaving myself logged into facebook on my dad's computer after a holiday weekend. Imagine my surprise when I got some notification about a comment I left on the local paper's website that sounded exactly like something an old curmudgeonly man would write.

Guess what my father is?

With sudden haste I logged my account out of all other devices. Hell no am *I* gonna be that crank.
posted by symbioid at 1:00 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Also - I logged on to Twitter today and saw some promoted tweet from a right-wing astroturf org asking why I oppose the Iranian deal.

Ugh.

"Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches social networks are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even especially the ones with digital watches social media."

posted by symbioid at 1:03 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


for what it's worth WWMT seems to have eliminated its comment section today, probably because no one was commenting than any flood of idiots commenting
posted by pyramid termite at 7:39 PM on September 11, 2015


Check this tale of a master sock puppet maker on the CommonDreams website.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:42 AM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


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